All reviews copyright 2006-2017 Evelyn C. Leeper.
THE CITY & THE CITY by China Miéville:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/02/2009]
THE CITY & THE CITY by China Miéville (ISBN-13 978-0-345-49751-2) is all about identity and duality in a very Borgesian way. (Actually, the title is "THE CITY & YTIC EHT"--but with "YTIC EHT" printed in mirror image as well, more like "THE CITY & YTI) 3HT".) I am going to try to write this review without too many spoilers. I cannot even say outright what the book is really about, for fear of spoiling some of the point.
The premise is that we have two "sister" cities, Beszel (with an accent on the 'z') and Ul Qoma. Beszel is a cross between Budapest and Prague; the accented 'z' is Hungarian; and "beszel" is actually Hungarian for "to speak". But some of Beszel's neighborhood and suburbs, such as Lestov, have more Czech (Slavic) names. However, "feld" (which is Besz for "cat") is not "cat" in either language, or any other language in my CONCISE DICTIONARY OF 26 LANGUAGES. Illitan, the language of Ul Qoma, is written in the Roman alphabet, while Besz is written in a Cyrillic-like alphabet. (Shades of Borgesian mirrors!) One is reminded of the old Yugoslavia, with Serbian in Cyrillic alphabet and Croatian in Roman alphabet, although in Miéville has the Cyrillic in the more Western-seeming city, and the Roman in the more Eastern, because there was a follower of Ataturk there who converted the alphabet to Roman, just as happened in Turkey. (Ul Qoma also uses dinari, just as Yugoslavia did.)
The pairing is not just of the two cities, or of the two languages/cultures Miéville used for Beszel. For example, in Beszel "ébru" is a collective term for both Jews and Muslims. (The narrator, Tyador Borlú, says, "[Our] tradition of jokes about the foolishness of the middle child derives from a centuries-old dialogue between Beszel's head rabbi and its chief imam about the intemperance of the Beszel Orthodox Church.") And there is the Besz traditional DöplirCaffé: "one Muslim and one Jewish coffee house, rented side by side, each with its own counter and kitchen, halal and kosher, sharing a single name, sign, and sprawl of tables. ... Whether the DöpplirCaffé was one establishment or two depended on who was asking: to a property tax collector, it was always one."
Another aspect I liked was that while reading the book, I thought I knew were it was going. To some extent, it did follow the expected path, with Inspector Borlú of Besz teaming up with Senior Detective Quissim Dhatt of Ul Qoma to solve a murder with connections in both cities. Because of this, they are constantly concerned about Breach, which apparently patrols the connections between the two, and Orciny, a shadow city which may or may not exist in the gaps between Besz and Ul Qoma. The two detectives find clues that there is something much bigger and far-reaching than a simple murder here. But at some point, Miéville has his plot take a different turn than what most mysteries would, with a resolution that is both unexpected and satisfying.
All this is fascinating from a literary standpoint, and Miéville has invented some lovely words for it: grosstopical, topolganger, insiles, dissensi. And there are marvelous descriptions: "It was, not surprisingly that day perhaps, hard to observe borders, to see and unsee only what I should, on my way home. I was hemmed in by people not in my city, walking slowly through areas crowded but not crowded in Beszel."
But there is another level. Miéville is a British Socialist, and
it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the two cities, each
"unseeing" the other, are representative of the "haves" and the
"have-nots" in our own world, living intermingled, yet neither
really seeing the other. There are many other examples of unseeing
in our world. For example, in a hospital, one "unsees" a person
whose nightgown is open in back. (In New York, many claim,
residents tend to "unsee" everything. :-) ) On a different level,
consider the Jim Crow laws in the South: that is your water
fountain, this one next to it is mine, those are your bus seats,
these are mine, each existing among the other. And one is reminded
of the Robert Silverberg story "To See the Invisible Man" in which
a criminal's sentence might be for a period of "invisibility",
during which everyone was ordered to "unsee" him. And, yes, there
is a lot of THE CITY & THE CITY about nationalism, cultural
identity, borders, and so on. (For an earlier intimation of
Miéville's idea by Mark, see
Miéville's previous book, UN LUN DUN, was in some sense a trial-run
for this. The idea is that there is a parallel world with Un Lun
Dun, Parisn't. Lost Angeles, the River Smeath, and so on. But Un
Lun Dun is not in our world, while Ul Qoma is in Beszel's.
In a sense, this book is uncategorizable. It is not science
fiction in a strict sense, but it is not fantasy either, at least
not in any normal sense. One might argue that it is alternate
history, but it is impossible to see how it might come about. It
is also impossible to see how it might be sustained without some
assumptions that are simply unsupportable in our world, Like
Borges's Library of Babel, or his Babylon of the Lottery, the world
of Beszel and Ul Qoma exist in their own inexplicable space. They
are what they are, and have to be accepted without rational
analysis.
As you might guess, I highly recommend this book. It will be on
the top of my Hugo nomination list for this year.
(After I wrote of the Borgesian nature of the story, I came across
the fact that Miéville said that two major influences on him for
the novel were Jorge Luis Borges and Philip K. Dick.)
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/30/2010]
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
Do not read the rest of this article unless you have already read
Miíville's THE CITY & THE CITY.
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
The one section of STRANGE MAPS: AN ATLAS OF CARTOGRAPHIC
CURIOSITIES by Frank Jacobs (ISBN-13 978-0-14-200525-5)
I found that had unexpected fantastical content was
"Enclaves and Exclaves", and in particular "Enclaves,
Counterenclaves and a Dead Body: The Borders of Baarle". If you've
read China Miéville's THE CITY & THE CITY, you'll understand why.
One wonders, in fact, if Miéville was aware of Baarle before he
wrote the book.
And the similarities are strong enough that I'd like to talk about
them. The following comes from
Baarle consists of two "administrative units": the Dutch Baarle-Nassau
and the Belgian Baarle-Hertog. These occupy 5732 parcels of
land which are completely surrounded by the Netherlands, but are
allocated to either Belgium or the Netherlands. Baarle is
described as having 22 Belgian enclaves in the Netherlands and 5
Dutch ones in Belgium.
One result of this is that, because taxes on a building are paid to
the country in which the front door is located, front doors are
sometimes moved to gain tax benefits. Because of differing closing
times, people in bars can get drinks longer by moving their tables
across the room. And so on.
But there are even more striking similarities to Beszel and Ul
Qoma:
I know--you think I'm making the last one up. But I'm not. The
body of a non-resident of Baarle was found in a building that had
parts in both administrative units, which made it even more
confusing.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/12/2014]
Re-reading THE CITY & THE CITY by China Mieville (ISBN
978-0-345-49752-9) I was struck by his descriptions of tourism in Besz and Ul
Qoma. It seems inspired by seeing (and reading about) amazingly
clueless tourists around the world, people who seem to think that
because they are tourists, the laws and customs of another country
(or even the same country) do not apply to them. (I say the same
country because there are plenty of American tourists who see signs
saying not to approach the bison, or not to let their children
stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon, but seem to think they are
somehow exempt. And in other countries it is even worse. They do
not see why they should take their shoes off in a mosque, or not
sit next to a woman on the bus, or not chew gum, or whatever.
So Mieville has written about tourism in Besz and Ul Qoma. For
these city-states, there is mandatory two-week training course and
an entrance exam, both as a written test and a "role-playing"
section. They need to learn--not just maybe read about, but
learn--"architecture, clothing, alphabet and manner, outlaw
colours and gestures." Even if they pass the tes, any violation of
the laws and customs they have learned will get them instantly
deported or worse.
Is Mieville suggesting this for all tourists? No, no more than he
is suggesting the "fractured city" method as a solution for any of
the world's problems. (Amazingly, someone has apparently suggested
this "solution" for Jerusalem! Mieville thinks that is "seriously
demented!")
One thing that does date the book is that someone's friends think
that something has happened to her because she hasn't updated her
MySpace account.
(Oh, and Random House apparently decided to take no chances, and so
bought and kept fracturedcity.org, the domain name mentioned in the
book. There are no .uq or .zb suffixes, though.)
EMBASSYTOWN
by China Miéville:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/27/2012]
EMBASSYTOWN by China Miéville (ISBN 978-0-345-52449-2) is another
stand-alone novel from Miéville, which is (in my opinion) a good
thing. His Bas-Lag novels are very popular, and under these
circumstances many authors would have decided to write more in that
world. But Miéville marches to a different drummer in many ways,
and not looking for the easy buck is one of them. (The fact is
that most writers used to be this way.)
To me, EMBASSYTOWN seems similar in style to THE CITY & THE CITY,
though I am not sure I can explain why. Both start with an
unlikely premise which is not immediately revealed to the reader,
and which is not simply "there is faster-than-light travel" or
"aliens have landed." In THE CITY & THE CITY the premise is
geographical, here it is linguistic. The fantastical in both of
these is found in a state of mind, not in technology.
In THE CITY & THE CITY, the premise may be obscure at first, but
the language is relatively straightforward. Here one finds oneself
looking (futilely) at the back of the book for a glossary. One
page 20 alone, one finds "immer", "miab", "the out",
"shiftfriends", "locomotor", "saft", "immer-stained", "enginarii",
"biorigged", "exots", "automa", and "turingware". The meanings of
some can be deduced (e.g. "turingware") while others need to be
further elaborated. (And not all of them are.)
Of course, this is not made any easier by the fact that Miéville
uses plenty of real words that most people have not heard of: moot
(as a noun), eisteddfod, encomia, nous. (Well, okay, people who
have read Tolkien will know "moot".)
At one point the plot seemed to turn into a Ricky Gervais movie
(without the humor), and I was sure I knew where it was going, but
then it took yet another turn and became something else entirely.
EMBASSYTOWN has echoes of the Borgesian idea of the language of
Tlon which has no verbs, only adjectives and nouns, or for that
matter of any number of human languages that follow very different
rules than English. It will appeal to all those who love languages
and words.
s Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/22/2012]
I have already reviewed EMBASSYTOWN (ISBN 978-0-345-52449-2) by
China Miéville. It has an interesting premise that has not been
seen in countless other novels. It is similar to Miéville's THE
CITY & THE CITY in that the fantastical in both of these is found
in a state of mind, not in technology. In THE CITY & THE CITY the
premise is geographical, here it is linguistic. I find the
differences among languages (even just human languages) fascinating
and so I enjoyed this a lot.
KRAKEN
by China Miéville:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/25/2011]
KRAKEN by China Miéville (ISBN 978-0-345-49749-9) was a
disappointment. I loved Miévlle's THE CITY & THE CITY, and a book
about a giant sea monster by him seemed really promising, but
somehow it never came together for me. The writing style is
probably more reminiscent of his "New Weird" books (PERDIDO STREET
STATION, KING RAT, and such) than the noir style of THE CITY & THE
CITY, or the more varied styles of his shorter fiction. It was
supposed to be funny--at least according to the blurb--but it never
achieved that for me. I suspect those who liked Miéville's earlier
work will like this.
LOOKING FOR JAKE
by China Miéville:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/17/2006]
LOOKING FOR JAKE by China Miéville (ISBN 0-345-47607-7) is a
collection of fourteen of his shorter works. I had hoped to find
these more accessible than his novels, but I found almost all of
them just as impenetrable. I can, however, recommend "'Tis the
Season". In this short story (which appeared in "The Socialist
Review"!), the worst fears of the Religious Right have come to
pass, and the celebration of Christmas is prohibited. No
parties, no holly, no mistletoe, no trees, .... But it is not
political correctness gone wild. And it has nothing to do with
the First Amendment and the separation of church and state (in
part because Miéville is British, writing for a British
audience). No, it's because all of these things have been
trademarked and so you can't have a Christmas tree, you must have
a Christmas Tree(tm) and pay a license fee for it. The same with
Holly(tm), Mistletoe(tm), and so on. "It felt so forlorn,
putting my newspaper-wrapped presents next to the aspidistra, but
ever since YuleCo bought the right to coloured paper and under-tree
storage, the inspectors had clamped down on Subarboreal
Giftery." Frankly, Miéville's "nightmare future" seems far more
likely to me than the nightmare future of Christmas being
forbidden because of political correctness. After all, one cannot
now sing "Happy Birthday to You" in public without owing royalties
on it! Speaking of which, a good companion piece for this would
be Frederik Pohl's "Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus" (written a half
century ago and depressingly prescient). Both of these stories
get added to "Newton's Mass" by Timothy Esaias in my mental list
of stories that I would put in a Christmas anthology, were I
ever to undertake such an unlikely task.
THIS CENSUS TAKER
by China Miéville:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/23/2017]
THIS CENSUS-TAKER by China Miéville (ISBN 978-1-101-96734-8): I
have read this twice (once when it came out, and again for this
ranking, and it just does not do anything for me. This is odd in
that I really love some of Miéville's works (e.g., THE CITY & THE
CITY), but I guess that is just because he has a wide range of
styles.
UN LUN DUN
by China Miéville:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/21/2007]
UN LUN DUN is China Miéville's first YA (young adult) novel
(ISBN-13 978-0-345-49516-7, ISBN-10 0-345-49516-0), and it is on
my list of novels to nominate for the Hugo. Miéville takes the
conventions and tropes of fantasy, and of literature, and turns
them on their head. For example, reading this I got to a point
where I suddenly decided that Miéville had been strongly
influenced by the opening line of Charles Dickens's DAVID
COPPERFIELD ("Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own
life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these
pages must show."). And it also seems as though he used Diana
Wynne Jones's A TOUGH GUIDE TO FANTASYLAND as a cautionary work.
In addition to these elements, there is a lot of wordplay--in
addition to Un Lun Dun, we have Parisn't and Lost Angeles, and
the river in Un Lun Dun is the Smeath. If the threat in the
novel is a bit more topical than the usual evil wizard sort of
stuff, well, that's okay too.
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