The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

This Philip K. Dick novel would be shelved in the science fiction section of a bookstore, but it has no science and it is not set in the future. Instead, this is an alternate-reality account of America in 1962, with the country ruled on the west coast by Japan and on the east coast by Germany, after the Allied forces have lost World War II. In the west, life is very formalized and the Americans have largely adopted the values and culture of their former enemy, including the practice of using the ancient fortune-telling book I Ching to make important decisions. In the east, slavery has been revived and all Jews are eliminated as they are found by the ruling Nazi Party. And the Nazis are still obsessed with territorial expansion. They want the west coast, too.

With most of the action taking place in the west, the large cast of characters includes a high-ranking Japanese official, who collects early-American artifacts; an American antique dealer, who supplies the artifacts (which may or may not be authentic); Frank Frink (changed from Fink), who is a secret Jew; Frank's ex-wife Juliana, who goes on a journey with a disguised Nazi assassin; and Hawthorne Abendsen, an author who has written an alternate-reality book in which the Allies have won the war.

In this novel nothing is what it seems to be; many times what appears to be real turns out to be fake, and what appears fake turns out to be real. Eventually, Dick even introduces questions about the nature of reality itself: Is there one reality, with all the rest fake? Is it possible for more than one reality to exist, perhaps in different dimensions? Is there such a thing as reality at all, or is everything an illusion?

Philip K. Dick wrote many, many novels, and some are straight-forward science fiction and others are really, really strange and speculative. Three explanations might exist for his unusual writings.

#1 Dick was widely known to be mentally unstable for much of his life. Perhaps some of his books are the result of mental glitches he was undergoing at the time of the writing.
#2 Dick was widely known to be a user of many drugs, including amphetamines and LSD. Perhaps some of his books are the result of a drug-altered mind.
#3 Dick really believed that he had witnessed more than one alternate reality. Maybe he is right and is just more perceptive than the rest of us.

I would recommend that you read this book with an open mind.