The Man in the High Castle
1962 novel by Philip K. Dick
The Man in the High Castle is an alternative history novel by Philip K. Dick, first published in 1962, which imagines a world in which the Axis powers won World War II. The story occurs in 1962, fifteen years after the end of the war in 1947, and depicts the life of several characters living under Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany as they rule a partitioned United States. The eponymous character is the mysterious author of a novel-within-the-novel entitled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a subversive alternative history of the war in which the Allied powers are victorious.
Dick's thematic inspirations include the alternative history of the American Civil War, Bring the Jubilee (1953), by Ward Moore, and the I Ching, a Chinese book of divination that features in the story and the actions of the characters. The Man in the High Castle won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963 and was adapted to television for Amazon Prime Video as The Man in the High Castle in 2015.
Synopsis
Background
In the alternative history imagined in The Man in the High Castle, Giuseppe Zangara assassinates President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, resulting in the continuation of the Great Depression and the policy of United States non-interventionism at the start of World War II in 1939. American inaction allows Nazi Germany to conquer and annex continental Europe and the Soviet Union into the Reich. The exterminations of the Jews, the Romani, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Slavs, and all other peoples whom the Nazis considered subhuman ensued. The Axis powers then jointly conquered Africa, and still compete for the control of South America in 1962. Imperial Japan won the war in the Pacific and invaded the West Coast of the United States, while Nazi Germany invaded the East Coast; the surrender of the Allies ended World War II in 1947.
By 1962, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany are the world's superpowers, fighting a geopolitical cold war over the world, and in particular over the former United States and South America.
“The Man in the High Castle” enters the record as 1962 novel by Philip K. Dick. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what High, Castle and novel can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“The Man in the High Castle” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, High, Castle and novel provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q749783. VIAF identifies the subject as 309275141. The Library of Congress control number is no2015162146. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1962, 1947, 1953 and 1963.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Man in the High Castle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.