The Man in the High Castle (Phillip K. Dick)

30 April 2014

The Man in the High Castle

A dazzling speculative novel of 'counterfactual history' from one of America's most highly-regarded science fiction authors, Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle includes an introduction by Eric Brown in Penguin Modern Classics.

Philip K. Dick's acclaimed cult novel gives us a horrifying glimpse of an alternative world - one where the Allies have lost the Second World War. In this nightmare dystopia the Nazis have taken over New York, the Japanese control California and the African continent is virtually wiped out. In a neutral buffer zone in America that divides the world's new rival superpowers, lives the author of an underground bestseller. His book offers a new vision of reality - an alternative theory of world history in which the Axis powers were defeated - giving hope to the disenchanted. Does 'reality' lie with him, or is his world just one among many others?

Average Rating:

Ross Hetherington (9 February 2020 14:46)

This and "Dr Bloodmoney" are the best Dick novels, in my opinion

Sinclair Manson (2 May 2014 20:54)

Is a Mickey Mouse wristwatch worth more, if George Washington wore it at the first Thanksgiving? How would you know whether or not it was a fake? If history is the result of the toss of a coin (heads the Allies win, tails they lose), then are the contents of history books any more real than the certificate of authenticity that came with your wristwatch? For a book that tackles the very nature of being, it's admirably grounded in a cast of more or less everyday people, whose concerns are mundane and personal. It is the ugliness of an enduring Third Reich that seems to push some of them to wish so hard for a different reality. But really, there's so much going on in this book that I can't even begin to get into it in this little box.