China Miéville's The City and the City is a truly eye-opening book. It's an urban detective story that works at the edges of plausibility: probably outside those edges, but that's up for debate. The author meant it to be thought-provoking and it is.
I was surprised to learn that there was a TV adaptation in the works. And yes, I'm a little behind the curve here, because it must be just about all in the can by now. Will it translate well to the small screen? It could. There's enough trippy material. I hope people continue to read the novel.
Truthfully I would have expected Kraken to be the first China M. book to be adapted for either the big or little screen. It's also both intelligent and entertaining, but hews somewhat closer to the thriller form.
I was surprised to learn that there was a TV adaptation in the works. And yes, I'm a little behind the curve here, because it must be just about all in the can by now. Will it translate well to the small screen? It could. There's enough trippy material. I hope people continue to read the novel.
Truthfully I would have expected Kraken to be the first China M. book to be adapted for either the big or little screen. It's also both intelligent and entertaining, but hews somewhat closer to the thriller form.
2 comments:
We've read most of China Mieville's novels and this one is pretty much the favourite. His descriptions of places are always so powerfully dreamlike that the characters seem almost secondary, but in this one the police inspector from the first city (Besel?) actually does appear to be a fully realized person. Maybe it's because I like well written mysteries that this one appealed so much but also I loved the whole idea of two cities in one where the separate populations who weren't able to acknowledge one another lived in complete obliviousness of the other side. Oddly enough, it's something many people do in the real world too, which was probably his point.
I'm surprised as well that it's being developed as a television series but, all things considered, Perdido Street Station would provide some difficulties the BBC isn't ready to deal with as would The Scar. I wasn't at all fond of Iron Council, but Railsea was wonderful - cartoony, joyous and rebellious all at once.
Besel did feel like a lived-in character. The two cities came from two different cultural backgrounds, one feeling Eastern European and the other more Middle Eastern or West Asian. Now these two regions do overlap. But really any city will have at least two cultures (which don't necessarily have to have different countries of origin) and there is often an effort to pretend the other isn't there. Which is another way of saying that I think you got Mieville's point right.
I haven't read The Iron Council yet. I'm not sure whether I'd like it more than you did. Only one way to find out, I guess. Railsea was very much a trip and I'm glad I got a chance to read it. Proofreading and editing must have been a nightmare, though, what with having to weed out any word with the a-n-d letter sequence and replace it with an ampersand.
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