Saturday, December 31, 2016

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (1962)

This was just on my list of classic audio books to listen to and it turned out to be a strange alternate history. Unintentionally keeping to my WWII theme this year, Dick looked into the possibility that Japan and Germany had won the war and America was split between the two countries. It was interesting to see white Americans as lower class. The politics was to too confusing as though I know some of the Nazi officials, I don't remember their roles, so much of that conversation was lost on me, but Goebbles and Goring are powerful men in this version of history.

The other main strangeness, was that an author in this alternate timeline has written a book about the U.S. and Britain winning - and his book seems to be very popular. At the end of the book there seems to be a major understanding what the book within the book is saying, but I did not get it and did not like to book enough to reread/re-listen to figure it out.

We follow a few characters: 
Frank Frank, a secret Jew that is a skilled metal worker gets fired and starts a small business with a friend making unique jewelry. I thought this was going to play out more but was unsure what the jewelry of the time was. 
The antiques dealer discovers that many of his antiques are not originals, but great reproductions. He ends up taking the jewelry on consignment and is trying to provide unique gifts to a Japanese official who wants to impress a Swedish businessman.
Then there are the two I just mentioned with another Japanese general coming in from Japan - there were SD guys who wanted to kill them and they were planning some sort of revolution.
Then finally there is Frank's ex-wife who is in Colorado and who hooks up with this Italian guy. Again, not clear what she was all about.

Now that I've read this, I found out there are at least two seasons of this as a series by Amazon. I might look into it.



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