The City & The City: A Novel

“I mean that if she were studying Orciny, and there might be excellent reasons to do so, she’d be doing her doctorate in Folklore or Anthropology or maybe Comp Lit. Granted, the edges of disciplines are getting vague. Also that Mahalia is one of a number of young archaeologists more interested in Foucault and Baudrillard than in Gordon Childe or in

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How could one not think of the stories we all grew up on, that surely the Ul Qomans grew up on too? Ul Qoman man and Besź maid, meeting in the middle of Copula Hall, returning to their homes to realise that they live, grosstopically, next door to each other, spending their lives faithful and alone, rising at the same time, walking crosshatched stre

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It was true. A political irony. Those most dedicated to the perforation of the boundary between Besźel and Ul Qoma had to observe it most carefully. If I or one of my friends were to have a moment’s failure of unseeing (and who did not do that? who failed to fail to see, sometimes?), so long as it was not flaunted or indulged in, we should not be i

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“Because he believed in it! He collated all these references, found new ones, put them together into a kind of ur-myth, then reinterpreted it as a secret and a cover-up. He … Okay I need to be a little bit careful here, Inspector, because honestly I never really, not really, thought he did believe it—I always thought it was kind of a game—but the b

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In seconds, the Breach came. Shapes, figures, some of whom perhaps had been there but who nonetheless seemed to coalesce from spaces between smoke from the accident, moving too fast it seemed to be clearly seen, moving with authority and power so absolute that within seconds they had controlled, contained, the area of the intrusion. The powers were

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“I fucking do not know,” he shouted. “Why the fuck are you asking me? Go get Borlú, because he seems to have a damn sight more of an idea what the fuck is going on than I do. Orciny? No I fucking don’t, because I’m not a child, but here’s the thing, even though it’s goddamn obvious Orciny’s a pile of shit, something is still going on, people are st

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I had seen Breach before, in a brief moment. Who hadn’t? I had seen it take control. The great majority of breaches are acute and immediate. Breach intervenes. I was not used to seeking permissions, invoking, this arcane way. Trust to Breach, we grow up hearing, unsee and don’t mention the Ul Qoman pickpockets or muggers at work even if you notice,

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Then the vehicles with their stamped permissions-to-cross emerged at the opposite end from where they entered, and drove into a foreign city. Often they doubled back, on the crosshatched streets in the Old Town or the Old Town, to the same space they had minutes earlier occupied, though in a new juridic realm. If someone needed to go to a house phy

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“Jesus, I don’t think so. If she did I don’t know shit about it.” He put up his hands. “Fuck’s sake, you know how watched we are?” He jerked his hand in the direction of the street. “We’ve got you lot on a semipermanent patrol in the area. Ul Qoman cops can’t watch us, obviously, but they’re on our brothers and sisters. And more to the goddamned po

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