The City and the City

Published 2023-03-25

Science fiction? Urban fantasy? Murder mystery? Political thriller? One of the most interesting premises I’ve read: two cities in present day central Europe superimposed on each other, occupying the same physical space, and a murder that happens in between. The first time the duality of two cities is referenced is at the end of the first chapter, in the following paragraphs:

An elderly woman was walking slowly away from me in a shambling sway. She turned her head and looked at me. I was struck by her motion, and I met her eyes. I wondered if she wanted to tell me something. In my glance I took in her clotehs, her way of walking, of holding herself, and looking.

With a hard start, I realized that she was not on GunterStrász at all, and that I should not have seen her.

Immediately and flustered I looked away, and she did the same, with the same speed. I raised my head, otwards an aircraft on its final descent. When after some seconds I looked back up, unnoticing the old woman stepping heavily away, I looked carefully instead of at her in her foreign street at the facades of the nearby and local GunterStrász, that depressed zone.

Since the book is categorized as science fiction, I assumed that this involved multiple dimensions or something, which occasionally overlapped. However, it gradually becomes evident that the actuality is somewhat more mundane, and far more interesting: it’s purely a political separation, and residents of both cities are trained from birth, implicity and explicitly, to disregard (“unsee”) the other city and all its happenings.

This leads to many really beautiful and fascinating passages, such as:

I watched the local buildings’ numbers. They rose in stuters, interspersed with foreign alter spaces. In Besźel the area was pretty unpeopled, but not elsewhere across the border, and I had to unseeing dodge many smart young businessmen and -women. Their voices were muted to me, random noise. That aural fade comes from years of Besź care. When I reached the tar-painted front where Corwi waited with an unhappy-looking man, we stood together in a near-deserted part of Besźel city, surrounded by a busy unheard throng.

What I really enjoyed and respected about this book is that despite its incredibly original and complicated premise, very little is left unexplained. Almost every time I thought, “Okay, how would X possibly work in two superimposed cities?”, that very thing was touched on, at least in passing, within a few pages — even mundane things like garbage, utility lines, emergency vehicles, etc.

The plot itself wraps up in a satisfactory if not entirely stunning way, but the plot is almost secondary to the incredible worldbuilding. A book that leaves you thinking.

Would recommend.