China Miéville
The City & The City

Fanucci recently republished in Italy (the first Italian edition dates back to 2011) this beautiful last novel by China Miéville (born 1975), which tells a unique story in an original way, even if some have sought to compare it to different authors like Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler, and Franz Kafka. In the sense that "The City & The City" can be understood as a mix between the styles and the contents of the literary works of these three giants of literature. A definition that indeed fits. We are, in fact, faced with a novel set in a dystopian future with the characteristics of the noir and even hard-boiled genre, yet it doesn’t neglect psychological and cerebral implications. On the contrary! Moreover, it is undeniable that although it hints at the science fiction genre, the basic concept on which the story develops is, in some ways, as old as the history of mankind and tremendously current in this new historical phase where building walls and dividing has become the main topic advocated by the so-called "sovereigntists," a terminology now recurrent in our daily lives.

Have you ever walked in the middle of the street, while people stream past you in both directions, are by your sides and you are there in the middle, as these countercurrent flows of people pass by without ever touching you, as if they were something alien. You are in a middle ground, in the center of the road where you can see everything, you see all the life happening around you on both sides, but others cannot see you. Or maybe they do. But they pretend nothing is happening. As if admitting to see constitutes a sin. A "breach." And it is precisely the "breach" that is above any law and institution controlling that shadow zone and invisible borderline between the two cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma in this fantastic novel by this British writer and activist, socialist, very connected to North Africa and interested in Arab culture and Middle Eastern politics. Two distinct and separate cities, yet at the same time, as the "unif" would have it, one city, divided by invisible barriers that do not admit being questioned. If you live in one of the two cities, everything that exists on the other side not only does not concern you, but for you, it does not exist. You cannot see from one side to the other of the barrier. Let alone trespass. Otherwise, the breach intervenes, and no one knows what happened to all those who have "breached": no one goes against the breach, and no one knows how it truly functions and operates.

Inspector Borlú investigates the death of a young American girl, but the case becomes complicated when it is discovered that she was killed in Ul Qoma and later her body was found in Beszel. The "breach," in this specific case, cannot intervene; indeed, there are points where the passage from one side to the other is lawful, and if the murder was committed in Ul Qoma, but then her body was found in Beszel, without it having breached or been conducted there through illegal means, the issue remains within the competence of the police forces. Therefore, our hero will have no choice but to cross over to the other side of the "city" to continue the investigations, where he will end up in an increasingly intricate story and at whose base seems to be the girl’s search for Orciny, a mysterious city between the two cities, a kind of myth, but like such in a society so obscurantist, it can become something concrete and dangerous.

Apparently, the work has also become a BBC TV series: this isn’t surprising, considering the content and the fascinating aspects typical of the hard-boiled genre and the spy-story allurements in which the "vintage" component of the Cold War translates into esotericism and Berlin and Jerusalem become one. Or two.