The City & The City

This book, the first by Miéville that I have read, reached into my mind and my guts and grabbed me in a way few books have. I have found myself driving and walking around my own city and suddenly seized by a frisson of vertigo, of uncertainty as to where I was. While trying to turn left at a rather odd intersection, in a lane which (you would have to see it to know what I mean) has always felt neither here nor there, I had a brief moment of panic. All because of The City and the City.

I don't mind; I'm not complaining. It is quite marvelous to find myself thrust into such an amazing and mind-bending book. And besides, when the fireworks are over, I am still left looking at my own city in a wholly new way, seeing it divided–we don't see them, they don't see us–as indeed it is and has always been.