The City & the City

The City and The City by China Miéville is a noir detective murder mystery set in an urban fantasy landscape where the cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma are not just neighboring, but enmeshed in overlapping space. What begins as a question of whether the young woman's murderer transferred the body between the cities illegally (Breach) becomes a question of how deep the conspiracy behind her murder goes. Though the plot seems a usual murder mystery, the author takes us on the journey to discover how people learn to live in cities, how cities become entities, and how politics can be dictated through everyday actions learned from an early age. We discuss the many fascinating intricacies of this novel to look at how we walk in our communities. (Spoilers!)