China Mieville's The City and the City wins BSFA Award

China Mieville's The City and the City was on my 2009 Best list. This morning Ali Karim sent me news that it just won the British Science Fiction Association's Award for best novel --and may be up for several more prizes this year. The City and the City may be a Science Fiction novel, but it's also a well written mystery novel.  The City and the City is the story of a murder investigation in parallel worlds. I thought it was brilliant, and I was surprised at my Bouchercon panel last October when I mentioned it, that so few people in the audience knew the book. Perhaps because so often the two genre worlds--science fiction and mystery--do not attract the same readers.

In The City and the City Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad attempts to solve the case of a murdered woman in the city of Beszel that actually exists in the same space as the city of Ul Qoma. It's a classic detective story with classical detecting methods, albeit in an alternative setting.

The Times called The City and the City "an eye-opening genre-buster" comparable to Kafka and Orwell, while Michael Moorcock, writing in the Guardian, said it was written "in the tradition of Philip K Dick".

Read the Guardian story HERE.  And, read the Book!