madeleinen 's review for:

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

4.25

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A deeply unsettling reading experience. The book is pitched as WW2 if the Axis powers won, but really, Man in the High Castle is a reflection on the nature of reality and fiction, and how they overlap. PKD asks readers to ponder how narrative shapes their everyday lives through an extreme example. He's not trying to convince us that he's figured out what would actually happen in this scenario - he's more interested in highlighting what narratives we become ensnared by - how fictional "realities" impose upon ordinary people. The characters in this book are living a hallucination, so naturally, you want to ask: what hallucinations are we living under right now? (PKD names quite a few if you're struggling) And how can fiction reveal these deeper narratives to us, so that we acknowledge that so many of our institutional and personal biases are fabricated, based in nothing but misunderstanding, discrimination, and hatred?