The Man In The High Castle

I've just finished reading The Man In The High Castle, written by Philip K. Dick. I got the book from my mentor after “winning” it in a lottery during our last basegroup of the year. Apparently it’s one of his favourite authors, Dick, and it is what is considered to be Dick’s best work. Now, I haven’t read anything else by this Dick person, and sci-fi isn’t generally the genre that I turn to. I have taken a certain liking to dystopian novels though, and this definitely makes the cut. The book is not futuristic per say, but takes place in “an alternate universe” (AU in fanfic lingo) where the Axis won the Second World War and the world is split between the Germans and the Japanese. In this unsettling scenery the reader gets to know several characters of different origins, occupations and thus positions in the power play of a split U.S.

There is some sort of amusing irony in the fact that the story centres around a fictional book which pictures a different ending to the war. That is a, for us, almost historically correct  book about how the Second World War ended. The author of this book is “The Man In The High Castle”, and thus gives the novel its title. It is somewhat confusing to explain about a book in a book, what with both being books and all. Anyways, the book in itself is also quite confusing, so I guess it's appropriate that the explaining of it is so. 

I think I recommend it, though I'm not sure of it. It is a very odd book, and the ending - without giving away too much - is even more so. There is a fair bit of German, and some Japanese in there, and there is reference to the culture of both ruling nations. I know German pretty well, so that wasn't a problem for me, but Chinese and Japanese culture and language are both very foreign to me. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book, and I guess if you have nothing (or as in my case, too much) to read, you could end up with a lot worse. 

xoxo

Frida