- The Years of Rice and Salt
infobox Book |
name = The Years of Rice and Salt
title_orig =
translator =
image_caption = Cover of first UK hardcover edition, published byHarperCollins in 2002.
author =Kim Stanley Robinson
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country =United States
language = English
series =
genre = Alternate historynovel
publisher =Bantam Books
release_date =2002
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardcover &Paperback )
pages = 660 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-553-10920-0
preceded_by =
followed_by ="The Years of Rice and Salt" (
2002 ) is an alternate historynovel with majorBuddhist andIslamic religious elements written byscience fiction authorKim Stanley Robinson , a thought experiment about a world in which neitherChristianity nor theEurope an cultures based on it achieve lasting impact on world history. It was nominated for theHugo Award for Best Novel in 2003.Plot summary
The book is set between about A.D.
1405 (783 solar years since the Hegira, by theIslamic calendar used in the book), and A.D.2002 (1423 after Hegira). In the eighth Islamic century, almost 99% of the population of MedievalEurope is wiped out by theBlack Death (rather than the approximately 30-60% that died in reality). This sets the stage for a world without Christianity as a major influence.The novel follows a
jāti of three to seven main characters and theirreincarnation through the centuries in very different cultural and religious settings. The book featuresMuslim , Chinese (Buddhist, Daoist, Confucianist), American Indian, andHindu culture,philosophy and everyday life. It mixes sophisticated knowledge about these cultures in the real world with their imagined global development in a world withoutWestern Christendom .The main characters, marked by identical first letters throughout their reincarnations, but changing in gender, culture-nationality and so on, struggle for progress in each life. Each chapter has a narrative style which reflects its setting.
Within the novel's re-imagined world, many places are given unfamiliar names, mostly of Chinese or Arabic origin. For example,
Europe becomes Firanja,Great Britain andIreland become the Keltic Sultanate, andSpain becomesal-Andalus ; while thePacific Ocean andAustralia are called by Chinese names Dahai (大海) and Aozhou (澳洲), respectively, andNorth America becomes Yingzhou, a land from Chinese myth.The ten chapters (theme) are:
* Book One - Awake to Emptiness - plague inChristendom ; theGolden Horde ;Zheng He 's explorations and imperial China. This chapter is written in a style reminiscent of the Chinese classic, the "Journey to the West ".
* Book Two - The Haj in the Heart - MughalIndia and colonization of empty Europe.
* Book Three - Ocean Continents - discovery of theNew World by the Chinese military.
* Book Four - The Alchemist - Islamicrenaissance inSamarqand .
* Book Five - Warp and Weft - Native Americans align withSamurai .
* Book Six - Widow Kang - theQing dynasty meetsIslam in western China.
* Book Seven - The Age of Great Progress - beginnings of industrialism inSouthern India ; Japanese diaspora to North America.
* Book Eight - War of the Asuras - a world-wide "Long War", fought with 'modern' weapons.
* Book Nine - Nsara - science, urban life andfeminism in Islamic Europe's post-war metropolis.
* Book Ten - The First Years -globalisation andsustainability .Quite a few historical characters make large and small appearances in this world, including
Tamerlane , Chinese explorerZheng He ,Akbar the Great, and Japanese Kampaku andToyotomi Hideyoshi .In the last chapters the book becomes increasingly reflexive, citing fictional scientists and philosophers introduced in previous chapters as well as referring to "Old Red Ink", who wrote a biography about a reincarnating jati group.
At the end of the book, we would get a picture of China finally recovering since the Long War. Everything seems to be in harmony and peace, until the goddess Kali is introduced once more in the final scene, hinting that chaos would return.
Key issues
Key issues of the novel are
multiculturalism ; andscience ; alternate history;philosophy ,religion andhuman nature ;politics ; feminism and equality of all humans; the quest forfreedom ; and the struggle betweentechnology andsustainability .Not only because of the long time scale, but also because of its frequent reflections about human nature, "The Years of Rice and Salt" resembles Robinson's
Mars trilogy .Quotes
*"Reincarnation is a story we tell; then in the end it is the story itself that is the reincarnation."
"But I don't want that to end," she said.
"No. And yet it does. This is the reality we were born into. We can't change it by desire."
"...The Buddha says we should give up our desires."
"But that too is a desire!"
"So we never really give it up...What the Buddha was suggesting is impossible. Desire is life trying to continue to be life. All living things desire, bacteria feel desire. Life is wanting."* "My feeling is that until the number of whole lives is greater than the number of shattered lives, we remain stuck in some kind of prehistory, unworthy of humanity's great spirit. History as a story worth telling will only begin when the whole lives outnumber the wasted ones. That means we have many generations to go before history begins. All the inequalities must end; all the surplus wealth must be equitably distributed. Until then we are still only some kind of gibbering monkey, and humanity, as we usually like to think of it, does not yet exist."
*"This is what the human story is, not the emperors and the generals and their wars, but the nameless actions of people who are never written down, the good they do for others passed on like a blessing..."
*“We will go out into the world and plant gardens and orchards to the horizons, we will build roads through the mountains and across the deserts, and terrace the mountains and irrigate the deserts until there will be garden everywhere, and plenty for all, and there will be no more empires or kingdoms, no more caliphs, sultans, emirs, khans, or zamindars, no more kings or queens or princes, no more quadis or mullahs or ulema, no more slavery and no more usury, no more property and no more taxes, no more rich and no more poor, no killing or maiming or torture or execution, no more jailers and no more prisoners, no more generals, soldiers, armies or navies, no more patriarchy, no more caste, no more hunger, no more suffering than what life brings us for being born and having to die, and then we will see for the first time what kind of creatures we really are.”
Other alternate Black Death worlds
*In
Robert Silverberg 's "The Gate of Worlds" (1965), anotheralternate history 'sdivergence point originated from a more virulent version of the Black Death c1348 . Here, as in "The Years of Rice and Salt", Islam was an early chief beneficiary of the demise of European civilisation, although the survival of theAztec Empire,Chinese Empire , African Kingdoms ofSonghay andDahomey and aMaori -centred Polynesian empire based inAotearoa (New Zealand) are the dominant world powers in this timeline.
*Harry Turtledove 's "In High Places" (2005) is set in a similar world where the Black Death killed many more than in the real world, resulting in large Muslim migration and settlement in Europe.External links
* [http://www.geocities.com/heiankyo794/tyoras-guide.html Trivia and study guide to The Years of Rice and Salt]
* [http://www.geocities.com/heiankyo794/timeline.html Timeline of the events in The Years of Rice and Salt's world]
* [http://booksandotherstuff.blogspot.com/2007/02/reincarnations-for-years-of-rice-and.html Reincarnation list of the main characters in "The Years" "of Rice and Salt"]
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