Book review of “This Great Hemisphere” by Mateo Askaripour

After a short, exciting prologue set in modern-day New York, Askaripour plunges us into a dystopian world of fantasy in the year 2529. After a series of catastrophes destroyed the planet, human society and biology have been radically reshaped. In this strict apartheid system, members of the dominant population – the DPs – exercise total control over all aspects of life using sophisticated technology and highly biased interpretations of the Bible.

Meanwhile, an outwardly transparent race of people known as the Invisibles subsist as best they can in the forest. Many of them paint their skin “in the colors that suit their mood, the latest trends, or the desire to be something they are not.” Some wear clothes in a misguided attempt to gain respectability, but some Invisibles move naked, like mere waves in the light. They identify each other by their “scent trails” and their “rumoyas,” a kind of “cellular spirit” unique to each. Invisibles are viewed with a toxic mixture of condescension and suspicion, are required to wear metal collars that the state can use to track them, and are constantly at risk of being attacked by DP guards.

Thematically, Askaripour is still peeling back the skin of America’s racial inequality, but in terms of song and feathers, “This Great Hemisphere” marks a stunning evolution from his 2021 debut, “Black Buck.” That audacious comedy, conceived as a self-help memoir, followed the stratospheric rise of an ambitious barista at Starbucks. While “Black Buck” is all sly satire and witty feints, this new fantasy novel is redolent of the odor of exploitation that permeates Margaret Atwood’s work from “The Handmaid’s Tale” to “Oryx and Crake.”

The downtrodden people Askaripour discovers in the forest learn early on to “take everything, and take, and take, for to take was to be invisible, and only the foolish dared to dream bigger.” One of these foolish dreamers is Sweetmint, the immensely appealing heroine of This Great Hemisphere. She is a precocious young invisible, orphaned and later abandoned by her beloved brother. But she has spent the years since then honing her inventive mind with whatever primitive tools are at her disposal.

In recognition of her cleverness, Sweetmint was chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the chance to work for Mr. Croger Tenmase. Revered by DPs and Invisibles as the chief architect, Mr. Tenmase saved the Northwestern Hemisphere by creating the supposedly “stable” society they live in today. (He reminds me a bit of Adrian Veidt from Watchmen.)

After being blessed by her fellow Invisibles in the forest, Sweetmint arrives at Mr. Tenmase’s castle to meet this disturbingly eccentric and iconoclastic legend for the first time. “Tell me the things people say that you think I shouldn’t know,” he demands, before asking her to drink something that could be poison to test her purity. With her help, but not only her knowledge, Mr. Tenmase hopes to trigger the Great Reset, a political and social crisis of such painful proportions that it will propel the Northwestern Hemisphere forward. It’s a mad plan that subordinates the suffering of countless millions of people to a theoretical future good.

But Sweetmint’s internship with this mad scientist is almost immediately interrupted by the news that her misguided brother has murdered the leader of this great hemisphere. Suddenly, Sweetmint is torn between working with Mr. Tenmase and trying to find her brother before he is arrested and executed.

It’s all incredibly imaginative and often wonderfully lush. Askaripour explores the dangers of racial betrayal and the rewards of collusion at the point of a bloody knife. And he unleashes wonderfully evil villains, including a J. from the 26th century. Edgar Hoover, who has a grip on everyone, and a Trump politician determined to catapult himself to power on a rocket of anti-invisible hysteria.

But I am convinced that the soul of wit and dystopias lies in brevity. After all, novels that exaggerate our social and political ills in a terrible future are the most polemical works of fiction. They are by nature allergic to nuance. And there is only so much you can read under the weight of that heavy hand before you get severe neck pain.

For all its considerable genius, This Great Hemisphere suffers from surprisingly poor pacing. While several exciting plot threads languish for lack of attention, an extended section on Sweetmint’s efforts to track down information about her parents clogs up the middle of the novel like a herd of sheep on the road.

And throughout, the dialogue is too heavily in the primary colors of the Marvel universe, as if the novel is fighting against a repressed desire to be a young adult story. Consider, for example, this typically awkward conversation between the security director and his deputy:

“Do you think we are better than all the men and women of millennia past who did what they had to do to survive? I’m sorry to tell you this, but we are not.”

“How can you say that? There is right and wrong. You used to know where the line was, but now -“

“Grow up, Deputy. ‘Right’ is man-made, just like ‘wrong.'”

Thankfully, “This Great Hemisphere” eventually regains momentum. The political machinations start to jump around like a sack of fireworks, and Sweetmint’s quest to save her brother leads her into a truly strange and revealing realm of invisible resistance.

So yes, it’s a great story, but sometimes it’s hard to see.

Ron Charles reviews books and writes the Book Club Newsletter for the Washington Post. He is a book critic for “CBS Sunday Morning.”