The Man In The High Castle

It is 1962 and the Second World War has been over for seventeen years: people have now had a chance to adjust to the new order. But it's not been easy.

The Mediterranean has been drained to make farmland while the population of Africa has virtually been wiped out. 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?

Subtle, complex and beautifully characterised, The Man in the High Castle remains the finest alternative world novel ever written, and a work of profundity and significance.

Philip Kindred Dick (1928-82) was born in Chicago in 1928. His career as a science fiction writer comprised an early burst of short stories followed by a stream of novels, typically character studies incorporating androids, drugs, and hallucinations.

His best works are generally agreed to be The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the inspiration for the movie Blade Runner