Summer Arts Preview
TIME's top critics survey this summer's not-to-be-missed arts events — from Bruno to Lil Wayne, from Harry Potter to Thomas Pynchon
China Mieville's The City and the City
Available May 26
Mieville writes science fiction, but hybridized as if in some hideous Dr. Moreau-style genetic experiment with horror and literary fiction and just a trace, not too much, of political theory. His utter uniqueness as a writer has made him a cult icon, and also probably kept him off mainstream best-seller lists. With his new novel Mieville has spliced even more DNA into his fictional genome: it's a stone-cold police procedural, which might actually make him a bit more user-friendly. The twist is the setting: The City and the City takes place in Beszel, a city which has a ghostly twin of itself that exists in the same space, but shifted just slightly into another dimension. The inhabitants can see and hear each other — but beware the places where the cities actually touch.
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