In The City & the City, a novel by China Miéville, the cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma exist side by side. At points, areas of the cities overlap and interweave, so the same street, albeit with a different name, can belong to both. Although no wall separates the two cities, the people of Besźel must have no visual or physical contact with the people of Ul Qoma: in the terms of the novel, they must not “breach.” Thus, two people may “live, grosstopically, next door to each other . . . , each in their own city, . . . never breaching, never quite touching, never speaking a word across the border” (134). From childhood, the inhabitants of each city learn the key signifiers of difference in order to see only the buildings, people, animals, and vehicles in their own city and to un-see everything in the other city. Yet, as a weary Inspector Tyador Borlú of Besźel makes clear, un-seeing takes effort because nothing but “unseeing others with care” or “polite unsensing” separates the sights and sounds of his own Besźel from those of the supposedly alien Ul Qoma. And when Borlú officially crosses over to Ul Qoma, he must see what he has always un-seen and un-see what he has always seen.