This Great Hemisphere
A Novel
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“A thrilling page-turner.”—Brit Bennett, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Wildly imaginative.”—The Washington Post
“Askaripour soars.”—The Boston Globe
A rallying cry for anyone who has ever felt invisible. A powerful, captivating novel about how far we’ll go to protect the ones we love, and what happens when we resist the narratives others write about us.
Welcome to the Northwestern Hemisphere, 2529. An equally exciting and terrifying world born from the ashes of our own, where almost half of people are born invisible, and thus relegated to second-class citizenship. Sweetmint, a young invisible woman, has done everything right her entire life, from excelling in school to landing a highly sought-after apprenticeship with a mysterious, powerful inventor. But all she has fought so hard to earn comes crashing down when she learns that her missing brother, whom she had presumed dead, is not only alive and well but also the primary suspect of a high-profile political murder.
Armed with nothing more than courage, intellect, and unwavering love for her brother, Sweetmint sets off on the mission of a lifetime: to find her brother before it’s too late. With five days until the hemisphere’s big election, Sweetmint must evade and outsmart all who aim to destroy her and her people, braving a world full of hard truths that many would rather remain hidden.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this ambitious sophomore novel, Askaripour (Black Buck) casts a young woman as a sorcerer's apprentice in a dastardly scheme to "reset" the world. In 2529, Sweetmint is the first Invisible to work for the Northwestern Hemisphere's Chief Architect, Tenmase, an elderly eccentric who has been instrumental in upholding apartheid policies that separate the Invisibles from the visible Dominant Peoples. Fast-thinking and a decent tennis player, Sweetmint impresses Tenmase, who shares with her his half-baked plan to remake Northwestern society. After someone murders Northwestern's religious head honcho, suspicion falls on Sweetmint's brother, Shanu, who disappeared several years earlier, and Sweetmint sets out on a dangerous quest to find and protect him. She must first locate the parents who abandoned her and Shanu as babies and then navigate a labyrinth of arcane alliances, including the Rainbow Girls (her former classmates who paint themselves visible so they can work as prostitutes) and underground rebels who call themselves Children of Slim. Meanwhile, two Local Managers vie to become Northwestern's next Chief Executive, Tesmane's real identity is revealed, and violence simmers between the Invisibles and the Dominant Peoples. Askaripour crafts a plot so intricate and twisty it occasionally leaves the reader on the sidelines. At it's best, however, this energetic, speculative deconstruction of colonialism feels like watching an expert put together a 1000-piece jigsaw.
