From glistening skyscrapers and bustling downtowns to dark alleys and creeping urban decay, cities are endlessly complicated and diverse. And so are the books that take place in urban settings. This week, we share some of our favorite city books and chat about what makes these environments so fascinating.

What are your favorites?

Shownotes

Books

* Pink Slime, by Fernanda Trías, translated by Heather Cleary

* Middlemarch, by George Eliot

* Lies and Sorcery, by Elsa Morante, translated by Jenny McPhee

* Swann’s Way, by Marcel Proust

* Wind and Truth, by Brandon Sanderson

* The Suicides, by Antonio Di Benedetto, translated by Esther Allen

* Zama, by Antonio Di Benedetto, translated by Esther Allen

* The Silentiary, by Antonio Di Benedetto, translated by Esther Allen

* Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino, translated by William Weaver

* A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith

* The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros

* A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole

* The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy

* The City and the City, by China Miéville

* Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo

* The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, by Ursula K. Le Guin

* My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante, translated by Anne Goldstein

* Lush Life, by Richard Price

* Solenoid, by Mircea Cǎrtǎrescu, translated by Sean Cotter

* Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolfe

* Ask the Dust, by John Fante

* One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Máquez, translated by Gregory Rabassa

* Anniversaries, by Uwe Johnson, translated by Damion Searls

* Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck

* Ulysses, by James Joyce

* New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster

* Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke

* It, by Stephen King

* The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides

* Open City, by Teju Cole

* Bleak House, by Charles Dickens

* The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larsen

* Midaq Alley, by Naguib Mahfouz, translated by Trevor Le Gassick

* The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon

* Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Alfred Döblin, translated by Michael Hoffman

* Down and Out in London, by George Orwell

* City of Saints and Madmen, by Jeff Vandermeer

* Cairo Trilogy, by Naguib Mahfouz, translated by William Maynard Hutchins, Olive E. Kenny, Lorne M. Kenny, and Angele Botros Samaan

* The Alexandria Quartet, by Lawrence Durrell

* London, by Edward Rutherford

* Dublin, by Edward Rutherford

* New York, by Edward Rutherford

* Paris, by Edward Rutherford

The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast is a book chat podcast. Every other week Paul and Trevor get together to talk about some bookish topic or another. We hope you’ll continue to join us!

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