{"id":328,"date":"2005-03-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-04T21:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=328"},"modified":"2024-12-31T12:22:46","modified_gmt":"2024-12-30T23:22:46","slug":"divided-kingdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2005\/03\/04\/divided-kingdom\/","title":{"rendered":"Divided Kingdom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Rupert Thomson<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Bloomsbury<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, March 4th 2005<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Following in the tradition of the great dystopian visions of Orwell and Huxley, <em>Divided Kingdom<\/em> by Rupert Thomson (details a political experiment in social control.&nbsp; Overnight the British population is divided into classes based on personality type and the country partitioned into four; the brutal and violent Yellow quarter for cholerics, the phlegmatic Blue Quarter (wet and dreary), the Green Quarter for melancholics, and the well-organised, peaceful Red phlegmatic Quarter.&nbsp; Families are separated, children removed and assigned new names and parents in the appropriate Quarter, and communication between the different populations strictly prohibited.&nbsp; The narrator, Thomas Parry, lives contentedly as a phlegmatic for 25 years, until he attends a diplomatic conference in the Blue Quarter.&nbsp; While there a late-night visit to a mysterious \u201cnightclub\u201d reawakens lost childhood memories, and rather than return home, he escapes in an attempt to recover his stolen past.&nbsp; Assisted by a variety of other social rebels, he travels through each of the quarters, finally joining the Whites-people who have lost the power of speech and, unclassified, are free to travel unmolested between Quarters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">As Thomas is exposed to each society, he comes to realise that there are aspects of each personality type in himself, and the novel leaves him at a moment of choice which may, or may not, be ambiguous.\u00a0The concept is an interesting one, and competently written, but <em>Divided Kingdom<\/em> ultimately lacks the conviction and force of <em>1984<\/em> or <em>A Brave New World<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rupert Thomson<br \/>\n<br \/>\nOtago Daily Times review March 4th 2005<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[32,370,18,36,407],"class_list":["post-328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-32","tag-fiction","tag-odt","tag-rupert-thomson","tag-speculative-sci-fi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1201,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions\/1201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}