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

“You see the building over the road? The one that used to be a match factory?” A mural’s remains in scabs of paint almost a century old, a salamander smiling through its corona of flames. “You see stuff moving, in there. Stuff you know, like, comes and goes, like it shouldn’t.”

All of us—twenty-one lawmakers from each state, their assistants, and I—were meeting at a juncture, an interstice, one sort-of border built above another.

“Two or three in my time. Drugs stuff. Mostly stops short of that, though: the gangs are pretty smart at punishing each other without bringing in ECS.” “Someone’s fucked up then.” “Yeah. Or doesn’t care.” “Okay,” I said. “I want you on this. What are you doing at the moment?” “Nothing that can’t wait.”

“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

There is no theology so desperate that you can’t find it. There is a sect in Besźel that worships Breach. It’s scandalous but not completely surprising given the powers involved. There is no law against the congregation, though the nature of their religion makes everyone twitchy.

“Oh.” She laughed. “Sorry. It’s the source of this Orciny stuff. Poor David wouldn’t thank me for using the term. It’s someone inspired by the early work of David Bowden. Do you know his work?” “… No.” “He wrote a book, years ago. Between the City and the City. Ring any bells? It was a huge thing for the later flower children. The first time for a

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

“It’s not just us keeping them apart. It’s everyone in Besźel and everyone in Ul Qoma. Every minute, every day. We’re only the last ditch: it’s everyone in the cities who does most of the work. It works because you don’t blink. That’s why unseeing and unsensing are so vital. No one can admit it doesn’t work. So if you don’t admit it, it does. But i