Always Coming Home

 Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin is a feat of world building. The book describe a future civilization in the Napa Valley of California called the Kesh. Set many centuries after an environmental catastrophe, the landscape and human genetics of the world still bear damage. There's an inland sea covering the Central Valley. The life expectancy is short; birth defects are common. Interestingly, there's a self-sustaining AI computer system remaining that's mostly ignored. The Kesh are a simple, matriarchal, agrarian people with elaborate rituals that evoke Native American archetypes and practices.

"Novel" is probably the wrong term for the text. It's a huge collection of narrative, poetry, songs, "researched" descriptions, charts, maps, interviews, and myths. It's the most comprehensive fictional world I've ever encountered, and since it's Le Guin, it leans heavily on anthropology. She concocted a whole language, cosmology, and social hierarchy. It's a rich, copious read. I'll admit that while Le Guin is a master writer, I skimmed the poetry after a while and ignored most of the glossary. I admire the effort behind Always Coming Home, and there was a lot to enjoy, but after 500 pages, I didn't feel the need to read every word. 

Paradise

 Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah is a strange, disturbing, tragic novel. Set in Tanzania during a period of political turmoil and colonization, the story focuses on an innocent named Yusuf. Because he's provincial and naïve, and because it's a close-third person of his travels, the reader doesn't really understand what's happening in the periphery. The narrative becomes increasingly dark. Part of the unease of this text is how wholly alien this world appears to me, a reader in 21st-Century America. In that way, I was reminded of Soul by Andrey Platonov. That book, set in Uzbekistan, seemed like from another planet. But while Soul was peaceful and hypnagogic, the ironically titled Paradise was unsettling and nightmarish.