Mieville, China -- The City and the City
The cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma exist on the same physical territory,
held apart by their inhabitants' rigid refusal to acknowledge each
other. When a body turns up in Beszel, and the weary police inspector
suspects that it might be from Ul Qoma... All the discussion about
this book seems to be whether it's SF or not. Okay: it is. It's the
"...where the science is social science" category. Would people behave
like this? No, except that if they did it wouldn't be unusual at all;
people do weirder things. But that's not my point. A friend read the
back cover and says "Oh, a metaphor for Jerusalem," and that's wrong:
the author couldn't give less of a damn about metaphor. (The narrator
explicitly disclaims Jerusalem and Cold War Berlin at one point: his
home city isn't split, only a foreigner would make that mistake.)
This book offers its setup as a reality, and lets the similes fall
where they like. That's why it's SF. ...But if you don't care about
that, then read a perfectly entertaining police-procedural that goes
political.
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