The Man in the High Castle

In "The Man in the High Castle," Philip K. Dick's alternate history classic, the United States has lost World War II and subsequently been divided between the Germans in the east and the Japanese in the west. In this world, we meet characters like Frank Frink, a dealer of counterfeit Americana who is himself hiding his Jewish ancestry; Nobusuke Tagomi, the Japanese trade minister in San Francisco, unsure of his standing within the beauracracy and of Japan's with Germany; and Juliana Frink, Frank's ex-wife, who may be more important than she realizes. These seemingly disparate characters gradually realize their connections to one anotherother just as they realize that something is not quite right about their world. And it seems as though the answers might lie with Hawthorne Abendsen, a mysterious and reclusive author whose best-selling novel describes a world in which the U.S. won the war . . . "The Man in the High Castle "is Dick at his best, giving readers a harrowing vision of the world that almost was."