Tidbeck introduces the mysteries and mechanics of her world slowly while leaving the origins of these pioneers opaque. Emboldened by their actions, Vanja starts to doubt the commune’s motives and rapidly learns that there is more going on than anyone is willing to admit. In this new environment, Vanja encounters the small subversions of the local librarian trying to save history, her retired-doctor housemate whose questions rattle Vanja, and a famous poet who mysteriously disappeared years before. Despite her shyness, Vanja is sent to interview the inhabitants of the outer colony Amatka about what products would help them and their underground mushroom farms withstand the harsh tundra climate. The regime, however, has recently allowed some private enterprise, including Vanja’s employer, a producer of hygiene products.

To avert similar chaos and destruction, a highly regimented communist collective tightly controls every activity (including recreation, job placement, and child-rearing) and encourages citizens to report any lapse in naming or other inappropriate behavior. Vanja lives in a world of small colonies where all produced objects revert back to primordial sludge if people do not constantly name them the failure of one colony in this duty resulted in catastrophic loss of life. 'Tidbeck reimagines reality and the power of language in her dystopian sci-fi novel. Amatka is a beguiling and wholly original novel about freedom, love, and artistic creation by an idiosyncratic new voice. Trapped in the repressive colony, Vanja dreams of using language to break free, but her individualism may well threaten the very fabric of reality. Unless objects, buildings, and the surrounding landscape are repeatedly named, and named properly, everything will fall apart. In Karin Tidbeck's dystopic imagining, language has the power to shape reality.

But when she stumbles on evidence of a growing threat to the colony and a cover-up by its administration, she begins an investigation that puts her at tremendous risk. Intending to stay just a short while, Vanja finds herself falling in love with her housemate, Nina, and decides to stick around. It takes some adjusting: people act differently in Amatka, and citizens are monitored for signs of subversion. Vanja, a government worker, leaves her home city of Essre for the austere, wintry colony of Amatka on a research assignment. A surreal and shockingly original debut novel set in a dystopian world shaped by language-literally.

Amatka by karin tidbeck