Thread: Literature Talk: Russian & Non -Discuss/Review/Q&As

I recently read an interesting novel called 'The City and the City' by China Miéville. It's a strange book based on a weird concept. There's a fictional city in a just as fictional Eastern European country, but for reasons which never become quite clear it is actually two cities superimposed over each other. Theirs is both an artificial and a supernatural separation. Physically, a street or a house can be adjacent to one which is politically (and architecturally) situated in the other city; sometimes the border between cities might even segregate flats in a house. The border is one the inhabitants recognize instinctively, it is not obvious. Except for a nexus which is situated at the city center, there is no place where it is allowed to cross from one city into the other, people actually avoid even noticing things in the other city. In fact, it is possible that two cars or pedestrians use the same street but are in different cities, and are therefore supposed not to notice or even interact with each other. The inhabitants have even developed terms such as 'unseeing', 'unnoticing' for the act of consciously ignoring what is going on on the other side of the border.

The somewhat supernatural component is called Breach - it is a force but also a group of people which makes sure that any violation of the border is punished.

This is the backdrop for a crime story with a twist: a woman is found dead in one city, but turns out to have been murdered in the other, which constitutes Breach - or does it?

The novel is pretty kafkaesque in its imagery and concepts. I enjoyed it a lot.

Robin

Originally Posted by bitpicker

The novel is pretty kafkaesque in its imagery and concepts. I enjoyed it a lot.
Robin

Yeah I have heard about this book and I'd like to read it too. You make it sound very interesting/
Keep meaning to start proplerly using my super fancy e-reader but I never get around to it... maybe I'll find that online and load it onto the ereader.