Science Fiction Book Review Susan Cooper Mandrake

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Spoiler alerts 1964 Penguin Books An old obscure book that may well be very hard to get hold of nowadays but a very good dystopian vision in the style of John Wyndham and John Christopher. It deals with a social anthropologist called Question, who in being reclusive as he writes his studies of remote Peruvian tribes, fails to learn of changes in Britain under a crazed social planning minister (later prime minister) called Mandrake. The minister has pushed a scheme that forces all British citizens to return to their place of birth, because an Englishman’s home is his castle and everyone takes pride in their roots. Queston rebels an joins other free spirited people, falling in love with one woman even though she has another lover too. Queston’s studies have led him to believe that the Earth will destroy humanity before we can harm the planet much more and in keeping with that, Britain is ravaged by earthquakes and tsunamis as warnings against Mandrakes’s deadly mandates. Thoughtful work, though it seems to have a weak we should all love and forgive each other ending, but otherwise a chilling vision of racism becoming an extreme form of regionalism. Arthur Chappell