The City & the City

Hardcover, 312 pages

Published July 16, 2009 by MacMillan.

ISBN:
978-1-4050-0017-8
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5 stars (1 review)

9 editions

The political thriller gets weird

5 stars

If I recall correctly, China Mieville wanted to write a novel that his mother might read. Presumably she was into crime fiction or political thrillers. What came out at the end is just as weird and inventive as China's other work. In fact it's up there with his best.

Mieville's approach to genre fills me with joy. "Mainstream" fiction, he argues, IS a genre, a niche. In other words, we genre fans are not the weirdos, you supposedly conventional readers are. In that light it's no surprise that his take on a crime/political thriller comes out as a bizarre, mutated version which is completely in keeping with his fantasy and science fiction works.

A city which is divided politically and ethnically not by a green line, but by the life-long psychological training and conditioning the denizens are given, is so weird that at first you think it's about a city …