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The first, third and fifth sections are narrated in the first person by the protagonist, Helward Mann the second follows Helward, but is written in the third person while the prologue and fourth part center on Elizabeth Khan, also from the third person perspective. The book consists of a prologue and five parts. A crisis ensues as its population decreases, the people grow unruly, and an obstacle looms ahead.

Many people are unaware that the city is even moving. The city's engineers lay track ahead of the city, reusing old track the city has crossed over. In the novel, an entire city and its residents travel slowly across a supposedly alien planet on railway tracks (it is left unclear to the reader whether it truly is not planet Earth). In 2010, the novel was included in the SF Masterworks collection. The novel's basic premise was first used in the short story "The Inverted World" included in New Writings in SF 22 (1973), which had different characters and plot. Inverted World ( The Inverted World in some editions) is a 1974 science fiction novel by British writer Christopher Priest.