The Great Plague destroyed Europe. Now the world's a different place ! From the award-winning author of the Mars trilogy, 'the ultimate in future history' (Daily Mail), comes the most ambitious alternate history novel ever written. As Bold Bardash, a horseman in the army of Temur the Lame, rides west across the steppe and on to the Magyar Plain, he comes across a town in which everyone lies dead. Long dead. Plague has struck Europe. Kali's black blanket has fallen over the lands of the West and nothing will ever be the same again. Into this empty land pour the opportunists: the merchants, slavers and warlords. The Chinese cross the oceans in their huge fleets; the Arabs traverse the deserts by camel and mule and the mediterranean by dhow. The last Europeans are killed or enslaved -- consigned to the seraglios of the sultans. So die the ancestors of Da Vinci and Copernicus; Columbus and Machiavelli; the Spanish Inquisition and the Conquistators; Shakespeare, Newton and the Pilgrim Fathers; Einstein and Hitler. And the world becomes a different place. In this extraordinarily ambitious, poetic and powerful novel, Kim Stanley Robinson takes us on a journey through seven hundred years of history as it never was, but might have been.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
'A huge, complex and highly enjoyable book' New Scientist 'A dazzling work of speculation with all the qualities of a great historical novel -- it is by turns thrilling, tragic, funny and thoughtful' Scotsman 'Stunning' Guardian 'A 600-year tapestry of striving, joy, unhappiness and ambiguity ! this marvellous book may be the most hopeful thing you read for a long time.' Evening Standard 'Robinson writes beautifully' The Times 'A novel of ideas of the best sort' Publishers Weekly 'The Years of Rice and Salt does what good speculative fiction ought to do: it arouses discussion and debate' TLS
About the Author
Kim Stanley Robinson was born in 1952 and, after travelling and working around the world, has now settled in his beloved California. He is the award-winning author of The Orange County Trilogy, The Mars Trilogy (Red, Green and Blue Mars), Antarctica and a number of highly-praised short story collections.
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More About the Author
Kim Stanley Robinson is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. He is the author of eleven previous books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed Fifty Degrees Below, Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt, and Antarctica--for which he was sent to the Antarctic by the U.S. National Science Foundation as part of their Antarctic Artists and Writers' Program. He lives in Davis, California.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
What if western civilization never existed?,
By
This review is from: Years of Rice & Salt (Paperback)
Imagine, for a moment, that western civilization not only did not evolve as we know it today, but that, in fact, it never existed at all. This intriguing speculation is the underlying premise of a novel which forces the reader to rethink all the assumptions with which we habitually evaluate the past--the "givens" through which we interpret events. Robinson presupposes that virtually all the inhabitants of Europe were wiped out by a plague in the fourteenth century and the continent left uninhabited. But this was not the end of the world, nor was it the end of learning and "progress." Life continued, but all the intellectual developments arose out of the Muslim states, China, India, and eventually the North America of the Native Americans.Alternating workman-like prose with prose "poems" and, occasionally, stories and legends, Robinson crafts a fast-paced history of a different world, creating two characters who appear and reappear in different incarnations from 783 a. H. (after Hegira), roughly the late 14th century, to the present day. Keeping basically the same personalities, regardless of their incarnations, Bold Bardash (Bihari, Bistami, Butterfly, Bahram, etc.) and Kyu (Kokila, Kya, Katima, Kheim, etc.) travel through time, experiencing life under the Mongols, Indians, early Chinese emperors, Muslim leaders, and Japanese sailors during their discovery of the New World. Some episodes are much more vivid, and ultimately more enlightening, than others, and as the cultures are brought to life, along with their different views of man's place in the universe, Robinson shows how the desire to impose one's own religion or beliefs on the outside world is the basis of some of the cruelest violence throughout history. Ultimately, the Great War, lasting sixty-seven years and costing one billion lives, pits the rulers of Dar al-Islam against the Travancori League (India), China, and the Hodenosaunee League (Native America). While it is intriguing to contemplate alternative history, Robinson's goal--the alternative history of the entire world for the past six hundred years is an enormous subject, one which, because of its breadth and scope seems to lose focus and pace as the book progresses. And while the reincarnations of Bold and Kyu help to bridge many gaps and avoid some problems of character development, the device becomes a bit tired by the end. Still, in showing us how all aspects of our current knowledge might have developed in other societies if western civilization had not existed, Robinson goes a long way toward reducing intellectual arrogance and increasing empathy for other cultures. Despite the book's limitations, Robinson succeeds in creating an alternative history which offers much food for thought and considerable narrative excitement. Mary Whipple
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not as engrossing as I'd hoped,
By Serena F. "Firesong" (suburbia USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Years of Rice & Salt (Paperback)
An interesting novel, but somehow I didn't find the story compelling -- I wasn't immersed in it, and I was tempted to skip around. Towards the beginning, I felt that the scene in which one character is made into a eunuch was disturbingly graphic; but I was relieved to find that the rest of the book isn't like that.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the years of rice and salt,
By
This review is from: Years of Rice & Salt (Paperback)
Absolutely fascinating "what if" and how our world might have been shaped..., oh that it were true! The kind of book that I re-read every year or so. Among my top 10 favorite books of all time.
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