"The City and the City:" two worlds, divided by taboos

Are political states real, or are they shared delusions or mass fantasies? China Miéville's latest novel, "The City and the City," (Del Rey, 312 pp., $25) explores this question and related ambiguities. Set first in a fictional Central European country called Beszel, then in Ul Qoma, a second fictional nation that shares its physical location with Beszel and little else, "The City and the City" calls to mind Kafka at his most existential.

Inspector Tyador Borlú has lived and worked his entire life in Beszel, capital of the country of the same name. A thin but incredibly tough membrane of taboos separates Borlu and other Besz citizens from their Ul Qoman neighbors. Describing the apartment where he lives, Borlu tells us, "In the morning trains ran on a raised line metres from my window. They were not in my city." Ul Qoma and Beszel have different architectures and economies, different alphabets, languages, histories, and national stereotypes.

Careful division of permissible gaits, stances and clothing colors help natives distinguish one another, distinctions enforced by a shadowy, super-legal organization called "Breach." Tourists and other visitors often have a hard time understanding which country they are in, despite required training courses. When Mahalia Geary, a U.S. national enrolled in a Canada-Ul Qoma student exchange program, turns up murdered in Beszel, Borlú becomes increasingly involved in his world's bizarre and Byzantine power struggles.

Miéville conveys all this oddness in simple, matter-of-fact words which are nonetheless evocative of a complicated world full of foreign sensory cues: steamed Besz dumplings and Ul Qoman cinnamon-spiced lentils, skulking urban wolves and flashing neon in impossible-to-read lettering. Unstated but ever present are the parallels between the divisions separating these two imaginary countries and the real-life divisions between Palestine and Israel, or Serbia and Croatia.

Borlú, a classic Raymond-Chandleresque knight errant in pursuit of the truth, crosses the international "border" into Ul Qoma. He goes even further, flirting with transgression as he walks by his apartment on streets technically in Ul Qoma.

Eventually Borlú becomes the prisoner of Breach. Even while in their custody, though, he continues his investigation of Geary's death and of a second, more daring murder committed before his eyes in broad daylight. Is there a third city for him to contend with, the legendary Orciny, a secret city between Beszel and Ul Qoma? Has he stumbled upon a conspiracy to do away with anyone who uncovers its existence?

As Borlú searches for definitive answers to these and other, more difficult questions, Breach leads him "in directions that made sense in neither city." Miéville's novel is similarly unorthodox, taking readers outside the box, off the flat paper that box is drawn on, and into fantastic realms where we learn how to see what we have been taught to unsee, hear what we have been taught to unhear, and let ourselves know things we have been taught to ignore.

Seattle author Nisi Shawl reviews science fiction for The Seattle Times. She is the winner of the 2009 James Tiptree Jr. Literary Award for her short-story collection "Filter House," published by Seattle-based Aqueduct Press.