Finished Fr 1/13/17
This is one of my paperbacks that I first read on New Years Day, Th 1/1/09
I felt that the book was a little hard to follow and unnecessarily complicated.
The Axis Powers have won WWII. The Nazis have committed genocide in Africa and the Japanese run the western part of the US. The Rock Mountain Area is a buffer zone and the Germans control the east coast.
Mr. Childan runs a store in San Francisco. He sells valuable old antiques which are very popular with the Japanese. One of the major storylines is that these are found to be only modern replicas.
Frank Frink (A Jewish man and his real name is 'Fink') worked for the Wyndham- Maston factory which is responsible for these fakes. He and another man begin making artificial and ornamental jewelry.
The I Ching is central to the book. Many characters only make major decisions after consulting the I Ching. It's a way of foretelling the future.
Frink's ex-wife, Juliana, is a judo instructor who lives in Colorado. She and her new lover journey to the home of Abenson, the author of 'The Grasshopper Lies Heavy'. This is a very popular novel that is an alternate history. In this book, the Allies have won the war. Juliana's lover is a German agent and will try to murder the author, but Juliana cuts his throat before he completes his plan.
There is an especially murky plotline with high ranking Japanese and Childan's antique shop.
Operation Dandelion is a plan by the Germans to attack the Japanese home islands.
The book's page at wikipedia-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle
This is essential to understand the novel and I don't think that I would have completed it had this not been available.
This book has been made into a TV series on Amazon. I can't imagine how they handle this because there doesn't seem to be the kind of book that would work as a series.
All of Dick's books are worth a look, but this wasn't one of my favorites.
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