Winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award 2010.

A strange and compelling murder mystery set in a place like no other.  In a unique and seemingly impossible land, two separate cities share the same space at the same time, the inhabitants passing every day and deliberately not seeing each other.  The greatest crime is ‘Breach’, moving illegally from one city to the other, which has dire consequences.  Citizens live in fear of accidentally committing it but deliberate Breach is swiftly detected and severely punished, so when a dead body from one city turns up in another it causes a special kind of headache for Inspector Borlú who must investigate without Breaching himself.  A startling, intense and enthralling read from an award-winning author who has created, in his dark, detached, paranoid world, a truly amazing place.

Comparison: William Gibson, Neil Gaiman.

Maxim Jakubowski's view...
His forte is the lavish descriptions of weird, surrealistic cities and the teeming, bizarre life that inhabits them, but his latest THE CITY AND THE CITY is almost a crime novel, as an investigator delves into a murder and a cross between Chandler and Kafka arises.

Comparison: Ray Bradbury, Stephen Donaldson, Neil Gaiman
For more see our Author 'Like for Like' recommendation system
 

Synopsis

When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Bes el, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlu 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. Borlu 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.

About the Author

China Miéville lives and works in London. He is three-time winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award (Perdido Street Station, Iron Council and The City & The City) and has also won the British Fantasy Award twice (Perdido Street Station and The Scar). The City & The City, an existential thriller, was published in 2009 to dazzling critical acclaim and drew comparison with the works of Kafka and Orwell (The Times) and Philip K. Dick (Guardian). His most recent novel, Kraken, was published in 2010.   In 2010 China Miéville won the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award for his novel The City and the City, the first time in its history an author has won it three times.   Maxim Jakubowski's view on PERDIDO STREET STATION... British author Miéville is one of the most adept practitioners when it comes to creating imaginary worlds and cities which are both alien and recognisable as an extrapolation of the world we live in. The urban and gothic New Crobuzon is a harbour for humans, mutants, magicians and every mysterious species under the sun. Old-fashioned storytelling taken off the leash and exhaustively inventive.   Author photo © Chris Close More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation