Two Cities is a novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer John Edgar Wideman

John Edgar Wideman

John Edgar Wideman is an American writer, professor at Brown University, and sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.-Early life:...

 set in the Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

 cities of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia during the 1990s.

The novel tells the story of Kassima, a widow in mourning for her husband and two sons who died in the streets of Pittsburgh. Martin Mallory is Kassima's tenant, a photographer whose works depict the 50-year history of life in the African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

neighborhoods of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.