Mieville, C: The City & The City

Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke, BSFA and Locus Awards

Now a major BBC television series, China Miéville's contemporary modern classic is an existential thriller taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.

When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary decaying city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But, as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and more deadly, than anything he could have imagined. Soon his work puts him and those he cares for in danger, and Borlú must travel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own, across a border like no other.

'The names of Kafka and Orwell tend to be invoked too easily for anything a bit out of the ordinary, but in this case they are worthy comparisons'
The Times
'Fiction of the new century'
Neil Gaiman
'Daring and disturbing'
Walter Mosley