The City & The City [Hardcover]

Certain writers absolutely defy categorisation – and China Miéville is most definitely of that rarefied company. His prose is exhilarating, poetic, coruscating with ideas and atmosphere – and it has enhanced a body of work that has almost no parallels in modern writing. Heretofore, if Miéville has brushed shoulders with any identifiable genres, they are those of fantasy and science fiction – which makes his remarkable new book, The City and The City, such a surprise. The author’s publishers compare this novel to Philip K Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984 – which at least gives a series of corollaries for this book, however tentative. There are elements here of the crime thriller, but very much refracted through Miéville’s highly individual imagination.

The body of a murdered woman is discovered in the remarkable, crumbling European city of Besźel. Such a crime is par for the course for Inspector Tyador Borlú, who is the premier talent of the Extreme Crime Squad – until his investigations uncover evidence that bizarre and terrifying forces are at work – and soon both he and those around him will be in considerable peril. He must undertake an odyssey, a journey across borders both physical and psychical, to the city which is both a complement and rival to his own, that of Ul Qoma.

Like all of China Miéville’s work, The City and The City will not be to everyone’s taste – the very individuality of the prose and the surrealistic inventiveness will not attract those preferring more prosaic fare. But for readers who hanker after untrammelled imagination – and look for literary fare unlike anything they have read before (even, it has to be said, by Miéville himself), then this is a journey to be undertaken. But with caution, perhaps… --Barry Forshaw

'A book that constitutes an SF event... Kafka-meets-noir mystery.' --SFX Magazine

'One of the most enjoyable and original novels of the decade.' --Morning Star

'A satisfying crime procedural novel loaded with parallels to pre-unification Berlin and Orwellian dread.'
--Totalscifi.com

'Beautifully, seamlessly, effortlessly created.'
--American crime writer Laurie R King

'One of the most fascinating literary creations of the new century so far.'
--Icon

`The City & The City works enormously well both as a post-Soviet murder mystery in the Olen Steinhauer vein, and as an innovative study of urban dislocation, segregation and Orwellian mind control. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a refreshing change from more conventional police procedurals.'
--Eurocrime.co.uk

'The names of Kafka and Orwell tend to be invoked too easily for anything a bit out of the ordinary, but in this case they are worthy comparisons...a gripping and thought-provoking read.'

'Miéville again proves himself as intelligent as he is original.'

'A murder mystery set in a surreal, Blade Runner-esque urban landscape.'

'An extremely ambitious work with a grand finale which won't disappoint fans of either genre.'

'This is Miéville's most accomplished novel since Perdido Street Station. It is fantastic in the careless, colloquial sense.'

'This is a fable, just like Clockwork Orange was a fable... The fable is just extraordinary and within this is a very good murder mystery.'

`His most disciplined and sharply focused novel to date.'

`Both utterly fascinating and his most brain-scrambling work yet.'

`It is simply unlike anything you...have read...The sheer scale of its ingenuity is just phenomenal.'

‘Fiction of the new century’ - Neil Gaiman

When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Besźel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and more deadly, than anything he could have imagined. Soon his work puts him and those he cares for in danger. Borlú must travel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own, across a border like no other. With shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984 , The City & The City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.

Winner of the Arthur C Clarke Award.

Winner of the British Science Fiction Association prize for best novel.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

PRAISE FOR CHINA MIÉVILLE Perdido Street Station ‘An astonishing novel, guaranteed to astound and enthrall’ Times Literary Supplement ‘A well-written, authentically engrossing adventure story’ Daily Telegraph ‘…puts pigeon-holing to shame’ Guardian The Scar ‘A narrative thrust of clockwork intricacy and battleship force’ Independent on Sunday ‘Wonderfully infectious’ Daily Mail ‘Extraordinary imagination and beautiful prose’ Daily Mirror Iron Council ‘A powerful, intelligent novel’ Daily Telegraph ‘Perfectly pitched’ Guardian ‘Deeply rewarding’ New York Times Un Lun Dun ‘Inventive… extraordinary’ Sunday Times ‘An instant classic’ Daily Telegraph ‘Endlessly inventive’ Salon

China Mieville lives and works in London. He has twice won the prestigous Arthur C. Clarke Award, with Perdido Street Station and Iron Council, and is also twice winner of the British Fantasy Award, for Perdido Street Station and The Scar. He is also the author of the highly acclaimed young adult novel, Un Lun Dun.