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The City & The City

Published by USC Bedrosian Center on

The City and The City by China Miéville is a noir detective murder mystery set in an urban fantasy landscape where the cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma are not just neighboring, but enmeshed in overlapping space. What begins as a question of whether the young woman’s murderer transferred the body between the cities illegally (Breach) becomes a question of how deep the conspiracy behind her murder goes. Though the plot seems a usual murder mystery, the author takes us on the journey to discover how people learn to live in cities, how cities become entities, and how politics can be dictated through everyday actions learned from an early age. We discuss the many fascinating intricacies of this novel to look at how we walk in our communities. (Spoilers!)

Featuring Caroline Bhalla, Raphael Bostic, Liz Falletta, and Brettany Shannon

To listen to the Bedrosian Book Club discussion of The City & The City click the orange arrow in the Soundcloud player at the top of this post. Or you can download it and subscribe through iTunes, Soundcloud, or Google Play

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– Raphael

– Brettany

– Bedrosian Center

Links …

LA Hashtags Itself
LA Plays Itself
Mike Davis, City of Quartz
Gilda Haas, Antioch University (Construction in Black and White)
Norman Foster (architect)
East and West Berlin (architecture in photos, wall as part of city)
Jurisdiction
Clinton Hill neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY
Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Inc. (ACSP)

Next Month …

American GodsRead American Gods by Neil Gaiman along with us, and listen to our discussion on January, 30,2017.

After December’s hard look at American Mythology through White Trash, we’ll take a drastically different look at the same idea through the fictional world of Neil Gaiman. We will be able to ask some of the same questions regarding what Americans believe about themselves and their country, whether those myths are based in reality or just stories we tell ourselves – all through a lens of supernatural beings arguing over territory.

Read along with us! Let us know what you think of the book or the podcasts at Facebook or Twitter.

This podcast was produced by Aubrey Hicks and Jonathan Schwartz, recorded and mixed by Corey Hedden.

@AubreyHi

@jonHLYP

@coreyhedden

Bedrosian Center