The Inverted World

Blurb

Inverted World is a 1974 science fiction novel by Christopher Priest, expanded from a short story by the same name included in New Writings in SF 22. In 2010, it was included in the SF Masterworks collection.
In the novel, an entire city and its people travel across a planet on railway tracks being pursued by a destructive gravitational field. The city's engineers must work to lay fresh track for the city, and pick up the old track as it moves. The ruling faction works to ensure that the people are unaware that the city is even moving. The city enters into crisis as its population decreases, the people grow unruly, and it becomes more and more difficult to stay ahead of the destructive field.