Philip K. Dick,Eric Brown, The Man in the High Castle (Penguin Modern Classics)

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick and Eric Brown is a story of life in post World War II North America, but the land is controlled by Germans and Japanese. The book must be read in its entirety to appreciate the point being made.

I strongly recommend people to read this book, but if you are going to read it do not read the rest of this review. Come back to the review after you have read the book.

The main storyline is the search by an individual for the truth about the war. His sojourn takes him across the country, and eventually he finds the secret. Germany and Japan lost the war but won the peace.

This book is a commentary on how Germany and Japan have faired economically since the war. It presents the argument that their commercial success has lead to political power, and has realised the saying that, "he who controls the present controls history, and he who controls history controls the future".

It has been my experience that people who did not live through the sixties did not get the meaning of this book. I think one has to have grown up with a knowledge of what Checkpoint Charlie was to get the underlying meaning of The Man in the High Castle.