THIS GREAT HEMISPHERE

A dystopian fantasy in which our present-day racial hierarchies and caste prejudices are ramped up—as are the humiliations, cruelties, and perils that go with them.

Askaripour follows up his debut, Black Buck (2021), by imagining an America even more divided by region and race 500 years into the future. By then, the world’s land masses are designated as hemispheres rather than continents and nations. The action takes place in the Northwestern Hemisphere, whose people are divided between what’s called the Dominant Population, or DPs, and Invisibles, second-class citizens denied opportunities and rights because they aren’t fully “seen” by DPs, who demean, ostracize, and even brutalize them when their presence is acknowledged. One of these Invisibles is Candace, who also goes by Sweetmint, a young woman whose intelligence and determination lead to a coveted apprenticeship with Croger Tenmase, an illustrious inventor considered a mystifying eccentric by his fellow DPs. Among the many tribulations Sweetmint has had to overcome is the disappearance of her older brother, Shanu. Still, she flourishes under Tenmase’s guidance until her world crashes around her with the news that Shanu is the primary suspect in the assassination of the hemisphere’s chief executive. Sweetmint leaves Tenmase’s haven to search for Shanu, hoping to find him before the authorities do. Her principal nemeses are Curts, the hemispheric guard director, and Stephan Jolis, a ruthless young aspirant for the executive’s job, pledging greater repression of the Invisibles if elected. Askaripour, whose first novel was a satire of class and racial transactions in corporate America, exhibits some of the same hard-driving and, at times, heavy-handed depictions of bigotry here. The author infuses his conscientious worldbuilding with audacity and intricacy down to the social rituals and the epithets casually hurled at minorities. (In this future Earth, the words “Black” and “white” are never explicitly used to classify characters.) And as the propulsive narrative runs its course, the interactions between social castes become subtler and less predictable, especially toward the book’s stunning, even stinging, conclusion.

A page-turning vision of a future made all too plausible by our volatile present.