Those who have relegated Phillip K. Dick’s 1962 masterpiece The Man in the High Castle to the strange badlands of alternate history, a genre populated by and large with useless re-imaginings, missed out on the novel’s central question.  The Man in the High Castle is not about how the world would be different if the Axis powers had won the Second World War; it’s about how the people populating it would be the same.  No doubt, the world of Dick’s novel is dystopic but its populace remains painstakingly human.

The novel defies genre definition but will appeal to a number of readers.  Fans of thriller novels will enjoy the political conspiracies and secret identities revealed slowly throughout. Read more about Phillip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle Confounds Genre Expectations