Karin Tidbeck

Amatka

Janice Hopper

I'd read Karin Tidbeck's first book Jagannath soon after it came out. It's a book of stories, and I liked it then. I heard about this, her first novel, when it came out a few years ago, but just now got around to reading it. 

Remember that episode of ST:TOS ("Shore Leave"? That's the one where a tired Enterprise crew stops at what seems to be an idyllic, earth-like planet for a little R&R? But they rapidly find out that what they think affects what they see? Amatka is a TEENSY bit like that.

Humans arrived at the world on (in? within?) which Amatka is situated somehow (nobody knows how, and the way back is closed anyway), sometime in the past. Humans can eke out a living there, but it's not really the most hospitable environment. It appears to be a resource-poor world, where food is some variety of mushroom or mushroom product, root vegetables, and beans. Everything else seems to come from some substance that is mined/extracted and formed into other needed products. The tricky bit is that the products made from this substance have to keep being reminded of what they are. There's a process called "marking", where citizens go through their possessions and call them by name very often. Otherwise, things tend to dissolve into goop.

Perforce this leads to a pretty tightly controlled society where citizens don't have that many things to keep up with. It's also a pretty repressive society, because you can't have people walking around calling a pencil a key, for example, because you might find your pencil turning INTO a key. Or just turning into something amorphous. The punishment for offenders or people perceived to be dangerous appears to be a) lobotomy or b) severing the connection to the speech centers of the brain. If you can't talk, you can't tell things to be other than they are.

In this world Vanja leaves her home in Essre to do some market research (a new thing in this world) in the commune of Amatka. She falls in love with her housemate, Nina, and decides to stay in Amatka. But all is not well there. Things are (literally) starting to fall apart. There are hints that a splinter group that left Amatka years before may still exist, but in a way no longer recognizable as human. It may be more in harmony with the world itself, but it's not any way "human" that we would recognize. Vanja, who appears to have chafed a little under society's strictures for much of her life, lets her rebellious side go, not without consequences.

And the ST:TOS bit? There appears to be no native animal life on this world. But Vanja finds letters from an early colonist where she talks about her cat that was left behind, and it seems like the cat shows up. And other people missing their cats hear mewing noises. At another point, children who have read about "fishing" make a game of it, and somehow start pulling "fish" out of the lake. But, like in ST, they aren't REAL fish. The whole world is responsive to the thoughts of the people, to one degree or another.

There's a lot to think about here about how words shape what we see and sense. I was reminded a bit of 1984 too. In the words of a NPR review I read, language can be used "to control both perception and substance". In our current really stupid timeline, where politicians and their cronies try to deny the truth of what we can all see with our own eyes, it's a sobering reminder of the power of words and thoughts.

I really liked this book a lot. I listened to it on Scribd, and the narrator was really excellent. Highly recommended.

"A surreal and shockingly original debut novel set in a dystopian world shaped by language--literally. Vanja, a government worker, leaves her home city of Essre for the austere, wintry colony of Amatka on a research assignment. It takes some adjusting: people act differently in Amatka, and citizens are monitored for signs of subversion. Intending to stay just a short while, Vanja finds herself falling in love with her housemate, Nina, and decides to stick around. But when she stumbles on evidence of a growing threat to the colony and a cover-up by its administration, she begins an investigation that puts her at tremendous risk. In Karin Tidbeck's dystopic imagining, language has the power to shape reality. Unless objects, buildings, and the surrounding landscape are repeatedly named, and named properly, everything will fall apart. Trapped in the repressive colony, Vanja dreams of using language to break free, but her individualism may well threaten the very fabric of reality. Amatka is a beguiling and wholly original novel about freedom, love, and artistic creation by an idiosyncratic new voice"--

Amatka

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