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. Borlú must travel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own, across a border like no other.

The City & The City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.

‘Fiction of the new century’ - Neil Gaiman

‘Imagine Raymond Chandler and Kafka collaborating, with an added zest of the politics of paranoia. Hypnotic stuff.’ The Independent ‘The 50 Best Winter Reads’

‘A gripping philosophical thriller about how human fears and prejudice can reshape reality.’ The Times

Listen to an interview with China Mieville from The Guardian Books Podcast - link >

Deep in the research wing of the Natural History Museum is a prize specimen, something that comes along much less often than once in a lifetime: a perfect, and perfectly preserved, giant squid. But what does it mean when the creature suddenly and impossibly disappears?

For curator Billy Harrow it's the start of a headlong pitch into a London of warring cults, surreal magic, apostates and assassins. It might just be that the creature he's been preserving is more than a biological rarity: there are those who are sure it's a God. A God that someone is hoping will end the world.