The Man in the High Castle [Hardcover]

Philip K. Dick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1962

An electrifying novel of our world as it might have been.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 218 pages
• Publisher: Putnam's.; Book Club (BCE/BOMC) edition (1962)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000NPF8I6
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,575,075 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Philip K. Dick Classic, May 4, 2011

By 

Dr. Bojan Tunguz (Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Man in the High Castle (Hardcover)

Philip K. Dick is a master of unconventional sci-fi and fantasy genre, and those qualities are clearly exhibited in this work. It is set in 1960s America in a world in which Germany and Japan have won the World War II. US and the rest of the world are divided between those two superpowers, and we follow lives of several ordinary Americans who try to adjust themselves to this reality. The characters in the novel are fully developed in a manner that we've come to expect from Dick's later novels. Their personal struggles are intertwined with the new geopolitical power plays. The title of the novel refers to the sobriquet for Hawthorne Abendsen, a fictional writer of the book "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" which forms a story-within-a-story and a sort of MacGuffin for this novel. This fictional book will also be at the center of the denouement of this novel, and may provide the clue for what this novel was all about.

The Man in the High Castle is another brilliant and thought provoking novel. It is an engrossing and fun read as well, and a true classic of science fiction.

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting alternative history, June 28, 2010

By 

Eric Aderhold (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Man in the High Castle (Hardcover)

This book shows a look at what life might be like in western America if the Axis powers had been victorious in World War II. The former US is divided into a few different nominally independent nations, with the western states under Japanese influence, and the eastern states under the thumb of Nazi Germany. The novel focuses on a few different Americans and their lives in the Japanese-administered areas.

Though a good novel overall, I found the plot somewhat confusing due to the fact that there are a few different main characters that really don't interact with each other very much and the viewpoint switches back and forth between them. Other than that quibble, I did enjoy reading about Dick's conception of how history might have been.