The City & the City

Beszel and Ul Qoma are two cities that share the same ground, tangled street by street, and their people are conditioned from childhood to unsee the other city entirely, treating its buildings and residents as blanks they must never acknowledge. Crossing between them without going through the single official border is the ultimate crime, policed by a shadowy power called Breach. When a young woman is found murdered in Beszel with connections that reach into Ul Qoma, Inspector Tyador Borlu is forced to move between the two cities and confront the possibility of a third, secret one hidden in the seams. Miéville builds the whole book around a hidden world existing in the same space as the visible one.