The City & the City
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40 free The City & the City trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
China Miéville's The City & the City starts like any detective story: a young woman's body on a run-down housing estate and an inspector assigned to the case. Then the setting shows itself. Besźel and Ul Qoma are two city-states sharing the same streets, and their citizens spend their lives carefully ignoring each other. This quiz covers the rules that keep the two apart, Inspector Tyador Borlú's investigation and the people he meets on both sides of the border, the power called Breach, and the rumours of Orciny. It also asks about Miéville himself, the prizes the book collected and its television and stage versions. It suits readers who have just finished the novel, book clubs looking for a discussion warm-up, and anyone who watched the BBC serial and wants to see how much stuck.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In The City & the City, what must citizens of Besźel do to anything belonging to Ul Qoma?
Unsee it
Unsee it: residents notice the other city's people, cars and buildings just enough to dodge them, then let them fade from mind. Failing to do so is breach, an offence worse than murder.
Q 02Which actor co-wrote the novel The Book of Elsewhere with The City & the City author China Miéville?
Keanu Reeves
Keanu Reeves named Miéville as his dream collaborator for a novel spun off from his BRZRKR comics. He doubted the prize-winning author would say yes.
Q 03For which terminally ill relative did China Miéville write The City & the City as a gift?
His mother
His mother liked his books but preferred detective stories, so Miéville wrote one that was exactly her sort of thing and exactly his. He read mysteries in bulk to get the form right.
Q 04In The City & the City, what does Borlú finally learn about Orciny, the rumoured third city?
It is an elaborate hoax
It is an elaborate hoax: the secret city is bait, a story used to trick a student into smuggling ancient relics out of Ul Qoma for a foreign corporation.
Q 05Which kind of crime novel does The City & the City blend with its strange, fantastical setting?
Police procedural
Police procedural is the form Miéville borrowed, and Publishers Weekly called the book an outstanding take on it. Interviews, paperwork and rows over jurisdiction drive the plot.
Q 06In The City & the City, which group besides tourists does Breach treat leniently for small breaches?
Children
Children may be forgiven a small breach, since telling the two cities apart is a skill drilled in from an early age. Adults who breach are usually taken away and never seen again.
Q 07What was Mahalia Geary, the murder victim of The City & the City, studying for her PhD in Ul Qoma?
Archaeology
Archaeology took her to an Ul Qoman site whose ancient finds seem far too advanced for their era. Her talk on a rumoured hidden city once caused outrage at a conference.
Q 08Which actor plays Inspector Tyador Borlú in the BBC's adaptation of The City & the City?
David Morrissey
David Morrissey, who played Gordon Brown in The Deal, led the BBC Two serial. Miéville himself worked on the production as a consultant.
Q 09In which London romantic comedy did The City & the City author China Miéville appear as an extra?
Notting Hill
Notting Hill cast Miéville and his then partner as extras. He later joked that the film was a dystopia set in an ethnically cleansed city.
Q 10How did the parents of China Miéville, author of The City & the City, choose his first name?
From a dictionary
From a dictionary: his parents were hunting for a beautiful word and landed on China. He was born in Norwich and grew up in London.
Q 11Which place in The City & the City is the only legal crossing between Besźel and Ul Qoma?
Copula Hall
Copula Hall stands in both cities under a single name. Travellers who pass through come out at the very spot they started from, only now in the other city.
Q 12Which term does The City & the City use for areas lying wholly in the other city, to be ignored?
Alter
Alter areas belong entirely to the neighbouring city, so they must be avoided and ignored even when they are inches away. Streets shared by both cities are crosshatched; those in your own are total.
Q 13In The City & the City, which body of 42 members must agree before Breach can be invoked?
Oversight Committee
Q 21In The City & the City, which Breach operative, known only by an alias, takes charge of Borlú?
Ashil
Ashil is only the name the man asks Borlú to call him. Moving as Breach, the pair pass through Besźel and Ul Qoma at once, and no citizen can properly see them.
Q 22In the novel The City & the City, which Besź politician admits arranging the relic-smuggling scheme?
Mikhel Buric
Mikhel Buric, a social democrat, boasts that the scheme enriched Besźel at Ul Qoma's expense. He dies in the gunfight that follows his confession.
Q 23In The City & the City, what proves the van carrying the body crossed the border legally?
A videotape
A videotape shows the van entering Besźel through the official checkpoint. With no breach to punish, the case stays with Borlú, who has to follow it into Ul Qoma himself.
The Oversight Committee takes 21 members from each city. Some of them resent calling in Breach at all, seeing it as an alien power to which both cities sign away their sovereignty.
Q 14Which Besźel police unit does Inspector Tyador Borlú work for in The City & the City?
Extreme Crime Squad
The Extreme Crime Squad, ECS for short, belongs to the Besź force known as the policzai. Borlú expects to hand the Geary case over to Breach, but the handover never comes.
Q 15Which constable works the Mahalia Geary murder case beside Inspector Borlú in The City & the City?
Lizbyet Corwi
Lizbyet Corwi knows the rough district where the body is dumped and is first to doubt her colleagues' lazy theory about the victim. Borlú comes to rely on her skills.
Q 16In The City & the City, which Ul Qoman detective works with Borlú once the case crosses the border?
Qussim Dhatt
Qussim Dhatt greets Borlú with a warning that he is only a guest and consultant in Ul Qoma. The two bicker, then agree to put their differences aside and work together.
Q 17The City & the City tied for the Hugo Award for Best Novel with which biopunk story set in Thailand?
The Windup Girl
The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi's debut, finished level in the voting, so both books took the Hugo. It also beat Miéville's novel to that year's Nebula Award.
Q 18In The City & the City, who is finally exposed as the killer of the student Mahalia Geary?
David Bowden
David Bowden wrote the book that made Orciny famous, then drew Mahalia into a smuggling scheme. He killed her in a fury once she worked out the truth.
Q 19Which corporation in The City & the City is behind the smuggling of ancient relics out of Ul Qoma?
Sear and Core
Sear and Core worked through a Besź politician to get the relics out of the dig, with a student as its unwitting courier. Its executive slips away at the end and is never punished.
Q 20In The City & the City, what happens to Yolanda Rodriguez as Borlú tries to smuggle her into Besźel?
She is shot dead
She is shot dead by a gunman just as the group reaches the crossing, and the detective escorting her is wounded. Borlú then commits a violent breach of his own and wakes as a prisoner.
Q 24In The City & the City, what do unificationists engineer that forces both cities into lockdown?
A bus crash
A bus crash between two coachloads of refugees sets off a massive breach. It erupts just as Breach agrees to move against the smugglers.
Q 25How does Mahalia Geary's killer try to slip away at the climax of The City & the City?
Walking in neither place
Walking in neither place, he moves so neutrally that nobody can tell whether he is in Besźel or Ul Qoma. Borlú ends the stalemate by forcing him to breach.
Q 26In The City & the City, what was lying on top of the murdered woman when police found her?
A mattress
A mattress, soaking wet, covered the body on a patch of waste ground between two buildings. The teenagers who called it in had seen an animal mauling the corpse.
Q 27The university where Mahalia Geary studies in The City & the City is based in which country?
Canada
Canada is home to Prince of Wales University, which keeps a campus in Ul Qoma. Mahalia herself is American, and her parents travel to Besźel to view her body.
Q 28In the novel The City & the City, which alphabet is used to write Illitan, the language of Ul Qoma?
Latin
Latin letters are used for Illitan, while Besź has a Greek-derived script that resembles Cyrillic. The two languages share a root and are partly mutually intelligible.
Q 29In The City & the City, what is sent to one academic at Mahalia Geary's workplace in Ul Qoma?
A bomb
A bomb turns up, built to kill one chosen person and carrying a line from a patriotic Ul Qoman song. Its intended target goes missing soon afterwards.
Q 30The City & the City author China Miéville holds a London School of Economics PhD in which subject?
International law
International law was his field, and his thesis was published as Between Equal Rights, a Marxist account of the subject. His first degree, at Cambridge, was in social anthropology.