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Product Description
Daily Telegraph
‘Relentlessly compelling and enormously impressive’
Review
'Sharply written ... One of his great strengths, in a genre that usually takes physical description as read, is an ability to evoke a landscape' Guardian 'The ideas behind Thomson's novel buzz with originality, sparking contemporary connections and recalling Brave New World and even Gulliver's Travels ... Divided Kingdom thrums with ideas and is a moving and, at times, gripping book' Observer 'This book is brave in a Brave New World kind of way, and should earn Thomson tons of readers' Esquire 'A hyper-real hallucination lit by sumptuous prose and fuelled by a prodigal gift for atmosphere and suspense' Boyd Tonkin, Independent
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A boy is taken from his parents in the middle of the night when the government decides to re-arrange the country according to personality type. Borders and guards are put in place creating four quarters of the country, each quarter very different from the next, as are its inhabitants. Or are they so different? How does society cope with these imposed classifications and restrictions? Do people become what they are told they are?
When an opportunity arises for this boy, now a man, to escape the life he has been forced to live for 27 years he seizes it and we follow his amazing journey as he crosses borders, both geographically and within.
I don't think I will ever forget some of the places and imagery in this novel. The White People, The Museum of Tears, The Bathyshpere night club, are just some of the gems from the authors brilliant imagination.
If you want a book that will immerse you and take you elsewhere, while subtly leading you to think more about the world we live in then this book will be right up your quarter!
When an opportunity arises for this boy, now a man, to escape the life he has been forced to live for 27 years he seizes it and we follow his amazing journey as he crosses borders, both geographically and within.
I don't think I will ever forget some of the places and imagery in this novel. The White People, The Museum of Tears, The Bathyshpere night club, are just some of the gems from the authors brilliant imagination.
If you want a book that will immerse you and take you elsewhere, while subtly leading you to think more about the world we live in then this book will be right up your quarter!
Format:Paperback
From the first paragraph of Divided Kingdom you know you are in capable, skilled hands. This feeling stays with you until the last page. Having not read any of Rupert Thomson's work - this certainly won't be the last I purchase - I didn't know what to expect other than the clear dystopian thrust. All I knew was that I was excited and apprehensive. And you know what? I still am.
This is a brilliantly conceived novel that conjures up the memories of Huxley, Orwell and Kafka. And like Huxley's Brave New World, you cannot decide whether or not the author is painting a utopian or dystopian picture. Of course, nobody would want to live in the Green or Yellow Quarter but the Blue and Red Quarter would certainly be an improvement on many UK cities.
Buy it, read it, and continue to ask yourself what quarter you would belong to.
This is a brilliantly conceived novel that conjures up the memories of Huxley, Orwell and Kafka. And like Huxley's Brave New World, you cannot decide whether or not the author is painting a utopian or dystopian picture. Of course, nobody would want to live in the Green or Yellow Quarter but the Blue and Red Quarter would certainly be an improvement on many UK cities.
Buy it, read it, and continue to ask yourself what quarter you would belong to.
Format:Paperback
Thought provoking although a bit too much in the spirit of a boy's own adventure, the protagonist Thomas Parry never seems to really get hurt through all the danger and troubles he comes across in this dystopia come picaresque.
Parry is taken from his home in the dead of night at the age of 8 and taken to a school where he is indoctrinated into the new world order. The UK has been redesignated as four separate kingdoms according to the humour of the individual.
The Red Quarter is for sanguine people, optimistic, outgoing and easily distracted, the Yellow for cholerics, quick to anger, passionate, the Green for melancholics, the thoughful depressives, and the Blue for phlegmatics, flexible easy going natured.
Parry becomes a true servant of the regime, entering the civil service and being sent to a diplomatic in the blue quarter, but then he goes to a strange nightclub which brings back memories of his past and goes on the run, travelling through the various Quarters and even becoming a White person, a person who fits in no Quarter but travels between them, before finally returning to the Red Quarter a very changed man.
Thomson shows through Parry's experiences that dividing humours negates the countering effects one humour can have on another, and does not allow for the ultimate aim of the theory of humours, that is, that we should recognise which humour is most dominant in ourselves, that is true, but that a truly balanced or humoured individual is one in which the humours are balanced, and therefore tearing apart the fabric of society cannot be right.
Parry is taken from his home in the dead of night at the age of 8 and taken to a school where he is indoctrinated into the new world order. The UK has been redesignated as four separate kingdoms according to the humour of the individual.
The Red Quarter is for sanguine people, optimistic, outgoing and easily distracted, the Yellow for cholerics, quick to anger, passionate, the Green for melancholics, the thoughful depressives, and the Blue for phlegmatics, flexible easy going natured.
Parry becomes a true servant of the regime, entering the civil service and being sent to a diplomatic in the blue quarter, but then he goes to a strange nightclub which brings back memories of his past and goes on the run, travelling through the various Quarters and even becoming a White person, a person who fits in no Quarter but travels between them, before finally returning to the Red Quarter a very changed man.
Thomson shows through Parry's experiences that dividing humours negates the countering effects one humour can have on another, and does not allow for the ultimate aim of the theory of humours, that is, that we should recognise which humour is most dominant in ourselves, that is true, but that a truly balanced or humoured individual is one in which the humours are balanced, and therefore tearing apart the fabric of society cannot be right.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
You must read Rupert Thomson!
I thought this book was great! You have to get past the shortfalls in the plot, but I think Thomson expects this from his reader. Read more
Published 11 months ago by cp1
Opinion Undivided
Sadly this is another case of an author who can write really coming up short. This book is not clever and it's not interesting. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Orson Tells
Rupert Thomson's Best
I have read all of Rupert Thompson's books and still think this is the best. Some books you read and you think "I could write a novel as good as that" but when I read Thompson's... Read more
Published on 20 July 2009 by Mick
Nice premise, shame about the plot. And the characters. And the...
This is the first Rupert Thomson novel I have read and unfortunately, it has not inspired me to read any of the author's other books. Read more
Published on 15 July 2009 by unlikely_heroine
You either love or hate it
This is one of those novels that divides readership (please excuse the pun): you either love it or hate it. Few are in-between. Read more
Published on 12 Jun 2009 by D. P. Mankin
Fantastic Read
I very rarely take the time to write book reviews (and you can see this hasn't taken long) but I really really really do not want anyone who has read the negative reviews of... Read more
Published on 23 Jan 2009 by P. Harris
Divided Kingdom
I have to write about this because I read it about two months ago and I still think about it! It's set in a future time when society has become so warped that the government... Read more
Published on 31 July 2008 by sara down
Disappointing
The premise of the book, a kindom whose population is divided into countries according to personality type, is promising but it doesn't realy come off. Read more
Published on 3 Dec 2007 by Brim
Acute political allegory - and much misunderstood
In a nightmare parody of J K Rowling's Sorting Hat ceremony, Britain wakes one day to find its people have been psychometrically pigeonholed. Read more
Published on 26 Oct 2007 by C. O'Brien
Directionless and disappointing
I read this book with some anticipation - the concept of a divided kingdom being enticing. Unfortunately the execution of the story is not up to the idea (who was it who said... Read more
Published on 18 July 2007 by J. Draper
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