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China Miéville
The City & the City tells a story that could be labeled a police procedural, a noir murder mystery with all the typical gritty realism. There is caution tape and forensics, politics and bureaucracy. But this particular detective story is told against a backdrop that is blurred and dreamlike, with aspects of reality airbrushed out of existence by the shared mental state of the characters.
Our protagonist, police inspector Tyador Borlú, investigates a murder in his home city-state of Beszel while dutifully routing himself, mentally and physically, around Beszel's neighboring city-state of Ul Qoma-- even when their shared border has no physical incarnation, even when the cities are physically superimposed. Before long he is pulled into an international investigation between the two, as a much larger conspiracy is uncovered.
The story is incredible in what it says without saying, and how long it leaves the nature of the two cities and the forces between them utterly ambiguous. How much is supernatural, and what is make-believe? What does it mean to say something isn't real when it has life and death consequences all the same? The book won the World Fantasy Award when published in 2010. But is this even fantasy? By the end, every aspect is spelled out in brutal clarity-- but only in due course.
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