The City & The City Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The City & The City Book

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 Beszel. 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 ForshawRead More

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  • Foyles

    'As in no previous novel, the author celebrates and enhances the genre he loves and has never rejected. On many levels this novel is a testament to his admirable integrity.' - Michael Moorcock, The Guardian When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Beszel, 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...  Like China Miéville’s debut Perdido Street Station, The City and the City is a virtuosic display of imagination and writerly skill, but not at the expense of a rich and involving story rooted within the conventions of the detective genre.  Miéville confidently and quite brilliantly pulls off the conceit of two cities weaved within each other, with only the shadowy members of the Breach enjoying total oversight. Although critical allusions to both Kafka and Philip K. Dick have been made, the author here speaks with very much his own voice, conjuring a certain kind of eastern European noir, pitched somewhere between the future and the past. Now adapted for BBC 2 by screenwriter Tony Grisoni and directed by Tom Shankland.

  • TheBookPeople

    When a woman is found murdered in the decaying European city Beszel, it seems to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extrime Crime Squad. But as he probes, he is transported into a world of strange and deadly conspiracies that will put him and everyone he cares about in danger. He has to travel to a strange metropolis to discover the truth. A high-concept thriller that brings to mind the likes of George Orwell, Philip K. Dick and Franz Kafka, China Mieville's The City & The City won numerous awards including the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel (tied) and the World Fantasy Award best novel.

  • ASDA

    When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary decaying city of Beszel 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.

  • Blackwell

    Fiction of the new century' - Neil Gaiman 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.

  • BookDepository

    The City & The City : Paperback : Pan Macmillan : 9780330534192 : 033053419X : 06 May 2011 : 'Fiction of the new century' - Neil Gaiman

  • 033053419X
  • 9780330534192
  • China Mieville
  • 6 May 2011
  • Pan
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 500
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