The City

From the Pulitzer Prize-finalist and bestselling author of The Son, a visionary novel set on a planet where everyone who ever lived has been reincarnated after dying on Earth, following disparate characters seeking to uncover the fundamental mystery of their second existence.

‘I will tell you about the City. In the first place it was not a city at all but a world, a planet in orbit around a star. No one knew how you got there. We just knew that when your time ended on Earth, you woke up in the City.’

Earth is a speck in the night sky. Light years away, but visible to everyone who once lived there.

For a long time, the City felt like paradise; it now suffers from the same tribalism, wars, and destructive technologies that blighted the Earth. And now the crisis has begun.

Miranda works at the Library in the Old City, cataloging the secret history of the human race. As the crisis progresses, she is chosen to meet the leader of the New City, John Foster Dulles. Dulles is curious about his crimes back on Earth: he believes they might pertain to the impending cataclysm. He also knows about Miranda’s former life in Nazi Germany. Which Miranda has tried to forget.

Moses is assigned to protect Miranda. A soldier who went AWOL during the civil war between New City and Old City, he spent years living with an ancient tribe. The tribe marked him with hieroglyphics that appear to be a map. But his quixotic journey to find the City’s creator – who might not even exist – has been delayed until Miranda is out of danger.

Tash has crossed the forbidden Sanzu River, following the shade of his wife, Helen, after she is killed in a car crash in New City. Tash is wracked with guilt over his wife’s death and longs to redeem himself. But when he sleeps, he is transported back to his life on Earth, where he was a Japanese fighter pilot during the Second World War.

So begins the epic, propulsive, mind-expanding, heart-breaking new work from Philipp Meyer. A combination of speculative fiction and a historical novel, The City reveals a great American novelist at the peak of his powers.