I’m not quite willing to call this book a masterpiece, but it’s a near thing.
This is set in a moderately-near future Bangalore, now known as Apex City. The city is run by the Bell Corporation, which strictly and impartially enforces a system of privileges based on any individual’s “productivity.” The 20 percent most productive live in luxury. The middle 70 percent live a comfortable middle-class existence. The least productive 10 percent - known as Analogs - is cast out into the post-climate change wasteland, condemned to grinding poverty (with organ harvesting a real possibility for anyone who causes trouble - one last final bit of productivity from the “unproductive” dregs of society).
For the people who live in Apex City proper, life is defined by their position on the bell curve. Everything they do is focused on rising along the curve, or at the least avoiding dropping so far in their productivity they face deportation.
For the Analogs who live on the outside, life is all about simple survival.
This book is a series of vignettes. They’re mostly independent of one another, though loosely connected - the main character of one vignette might get mentioned in the next one, that kind of thing. Though they’re disconnected, they come together to form a mosaic of life in and around Apex City that is touching, challenging, and compelling by turns.
The one and only complaint I have about this book is that one of the vignettes, which was clearly meant to be taken seriously - I just couldn’t. (It’s the one about the emojis, for anyone who is curious and has read it.) I get what the author was trying to do, but I simply couldn’t be anything but bemused.
But that’s a minor complaint in a book that I overall loved. Highly recommended.
Comes out March 28.