A dystopian novel shaped by disappearing language - very strange yet intriguing. I found the premise meaningful without having to read too much into it, and yet I would have liked more character development because they had so much promise.

This novel had an interesting premise and concept. The idea that language shapes the world is one that is prevalent among sociologists but it is a concept that is not really considered by many people. The idea to base a story on this is remarkable and I think the author created a very provocative novel here. The writing style is unique in that it doesn't actually tell you things straight to your face. The information needs to be gleaned through careful reading and connecting of the different clues laid out by the author. The magnanimity of the situation at hand only becomes clear as you continue to read the story. The ability to make the reader think deeper is not easy to do, but the author does it here effortlessly. For those reasons, I loved the prose and writing style employed here. This is not a fast-paced story and you will be sorely disappointed if you are looking for a high-intensity action novel. This didn't bother me in the slightest because the pacing worked to convey the intent of this novel. However, I wasn't as happy with the characters. It was very difficult to connect with Vanja (or any of the characters). All of the characters were aloof and it was hard for me as a reader to understand them. While I understand that the dystopian world in this novel discourages emotional connection, I thought the author could still have found a way to make the characters feel things in a way that would make sense to the reader. This lack of emotional connection is especially problematic when considering the relationship between Vanja and Nina: there didn't seem to be any. I didn't expect there to be a full blown romance but the interactions between these 2 characters was not strong enough for me to feel they were in love. However, this was the only real negative I could find with this novel. Overall, this is a compelling and interesting story that will really force the reader to think deeply on the various themes that come into focus in the novel. I'm giving this a 4/5 stars because it deeply resonated with me; this is a story I am not likely to forget any time soon!

Karin Tidbeck first came to my attention in 2012, with the publication of Jagannath (Cheeky Frawg), a slim collection of quietly disturbing stories. Tidbeck, a Swedish sf writer, manages the difficult task of writing in both English and Swedish, writing in one language and translating to the other as required. Her first novel, Amatka, was also published in 2012, but because it was written in Swedish and published in Sweden it escaped my attention. But earlier this summer an English translation by the author was published by Vintage Books, and it’s no less quiet and no less disturbing.

Amatka is set on a bleak and austere colony world; as it opens a young woman, Vanja, is sent to the outlying community of Amatka to conduct some mundane market research. But we quickly see that for all the flat affect of it and its inhabitants, this is not a mundane world. Objects manufactured on this world, from the raw (fungal) materials, fall apart if they are not “marked” (i.e., named) by their owners on a regular basis, as though they need to be constantly reminded of what they are. Mass-produced consumer goods, toothbrushes and suitcases, each, like golems, brought into being — and kept there — by a word.

There are pre-colonial products that don’t do this — “good paper,” for example — but they’re growing increasingly scarce. There is other evidence that society is beginning to become frayed. Life is tightly structured, disciplined and conformist, especially, Vanja learns, in Amatka, a liminal space where laxity has greater consequences: she could get away with sloppiness in the capital, but not here on the margins. Bored, Vanja begins digging into the truth; she learns that the objects manufactured on this world are not only kept together by their thoughts; on this world thoughts create reality, and uncontrolled thoughts can lead — and have led — to literal destruction.

Tidbeck’s prose is as austere as the world she creates, and it’s devastatingly effective in its control and restraint. She paints a society whose totalitarianism is utterly convincing down to the smallest, lived detail. This novel reads like it was written behind the Iron Curtain; the parallels to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four cannot be ignored. But Tidbeck is far more existential than Orwell: in Amatka we see a society engaging in rigid self-control, to the extreme of lobotomizing its dissidents, not in an attempt to maintain the political order, but to sustain reality itself. It questions the extent to which reality is consensus-based, and explores the desperation that can lead to authoritarianism. In the end, it is a parable of thought control of startling wisdom and profoundity, one I expect we’ll be reading for years to come.

After reading Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck years ago, I knew I wanted to read anything of hers published in English. It's still one of my favorite short story collections. I believe Amatka is the only other of her works published in the U.S., though I could be wrong.

Amatka is both similar and different than Tidbeck's short stories. It has the same subtlety, the same unique world building, and the same ambiguous ending (which I loved). I missed out on the lyricism of Tidbeck's short stories, and I never felt engaged with the main character, Vanja. But I also think Vanja isn't the kind of person who lets others become fully engaged with her. She holds herself off with only occasional lapses into humanness, which should be more heartbreaking because of how rare they are, but I admit I didn't find them so.

The dystopian world discourages emotional connections with others as well. I don't want to go into more detail about the world building, because that aids in the novel's mystery, but it suppresses emotion and creativity--for a reason.

What Tidbeck does really well in this novel is maintain intrigue in the seemingly mundane. Vanja has been sent to Amatka to investigate and report on sanitation habits. Several of her reports are included throughout the novel. What should be a boring investigation is actually quite interesting, and slowly develops into Vanja's continued investigation into areas she hasn't been hired for.

Overall, I enjoyed reading it, and would recommend to anyone looking for unique world building in their dystopias.

Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Posted review on Goodreads 07/13/2017
Posted review on Amazon 07/13/2017
Posted on my personal blog 08/09/2017

From the beginning Amatka generates a prickly feeling of disquiet. Is it because the protagonist, Vanja, calls her watch her “wrist clock” or that she worries about marking every object she encounters with its name? Odd, but these could be personal tics. Otherwise, the description of her remote, cold world could be an old-school Communist nation; partitioned into four colonies, each fulfilling a need for the greater community—Essre, the administrative center; Balbit, science and research; Odek, industry and Amatka, agriculture. There was a fifth colony, but it is long gone and never discussed. Vanja is sent to Amatka as a researcher to determine what kind of personal hygiene products they need. She meets her new roommate, Nina, and it is as Nina corrects her for misspeaking about how many floors are in their house that a radar clicks on. When Vanja goes to unpack her belongings and finds that her toothbrush has dissolved into a puddle of sticky white goop, she is terrified. So am I and I don’t know why. Yet.

Author Karen Tidback fosters the creeping dread in Amatka by blending it with the very real facts of a totalitarian regime. Communities are separate with little to no communication between them, there is no freedom of speech and life is highly regimented. Whatever came before is not discussed and by Vanja’s time is barely remembered. But, as she settles into her new assignment, she finds herself questioning—the one thing that is not tolerated. When she meets a librarian (Yes! Go librarians!) who has access to writings from the old world she starts looking for answers on her own.

For some the pace of Amatka may be too slow, but I was reminded of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. Something’s not quite right, but how big or bad can it be? By making what is wrong something as simple as the necessity to name everything properly and repeatedly Tidbeck makes the innocuous feel dangerous. If, by the end, the plot is less than satisfying Amatka is still an interesting take on authoritarianism and the power of the human mind.

In Karin Tidbeck’s dystopian fantasy Amatka (Knopf Doubleday, digital galley), words have the power to build, heal and destroy. Literally.


When information assistant Vanja travels to a neighboring colony to collect information about hygiene habits she quickly gets the feeling things aren’t well. She notices a world unraveling at its edges, despite the community’s best efforts to maintain its structure.

Amatka is an unusual and intriguing novel where physical objects don’t behave in a normal manner. Material things must be accurately labeled with their purpose, lest they dissolve into useless globs. Even songs and poetry are put to use to keep order. But Vanja suspects there is more to the world than the restricted colonial citizens are allowed to see and she walks a fine line trying to discover the truth.

Amatka can be read as an allegory on the restrictive nature of political, or politically-correct, speech. When members of a social group are directed in the use of language too tightly, and judged too harshly for its misuse, new ideas fester and the world grows smaller.

That was weird. Seriously weird, but oddly fascinating, but with an ending I found unsatisfying. My thoughts are all over the place for this one, so here they are first in list formate and then a bit more elaborated.

Pros:
World building
Atmosphere
Mood
Pacing

Cons:
Characters
Prose
Conclusion.

Set in the not specified future on a I assume different planet, this books reads very much like a classic dystopian novel in the style of Ray Bradbury or George Orwell. The main character, Vanja, arrives in Amatka with the order to do some kind of market research on hygiene products as commercial production has been legalized and her employer wants to know how to sell more stuff to this colony. As she falls in love with her housemate Nina, she decides to stay in this barren place even though things seem odd to her.

The main premise is stunning in its originality (at least it is to me) - things have to be named repeatedly and be marked because otherwise they dissolve into some kind of goo: so a table has a sign saying "table", doors are labeled "door" and so on. Citizens have to be constantly vigilant lest they lose important possessions. This makes for an interesting social structure where nothing is permanent and in reaction everything is rigid and unchanging. Karin Tidbeck uses this disorienting juxtaposition to paint a very vivid picture of the world she created. I absolutely adored this part.

The characters on the other hand never truly came alive for me. Their reactions are always left mostly unexplained and I had a hard time connecting with them. Especially the love story between Vanja and Nina made very little sense to me - and I never understood what they liked about each other and what made Vanja especially abandon her previous life with hardly any second thoughts.

Ultimately, I think this book works best if you study it and analyse it and discuss it with others. There are so many layers that could be talked about and so much to think about, that a casual reading does not do it justice. As it stands, it kept me at arm's length and I never felt fully engaged with the characters.

If I had come across Karin Tidbeck’s Amatka on my shelves, rather than via an ARC sent to my Kindle, I might have thought I’d picked up one of my father’s old books I’ve managed to hang on to over the decades. Say, a late 1960s, early 1970s translation of a Soviet science fiction novel (which he did in fact read). Throw in a bit of the Al Pacino movie Insomnia (though minus Robin William’s killer character), and that combo comes pretty close to matching the feel of Tidbeck’s tale. How appealing that comparison will be to readers I have no idea, but I found myself pulled in by Tidbeck’s atmospheric dystopia, even if I couldn’t nail down exactly why.

Tidbeck sets her story on an unnamed planet which had been colonized long ago. There were five colonies originally, but early on we learn that an unexplained catastrophe destroyed one of the colonies. Life in the colonies is a traditional sort of collective dystopia—a trudge of existence on a gray sky, bland food (all of it based off of mushrooms), lots of bureaucracy and dull jobs (many assigned to you), children raised apart from their parents, procreation not so much regulated but strongly obligatory, top-down rulemaking, and an overall sense of oppression and bleakness. The standout detail is the way in which everything in this world needs to be named and marked on a regular basis or they stop “being what they are” and become instead an amorphous gooey substance, something we see happen within the first few chapters when the main character Vanja forgets to name her suitcase, prompting an embarrassing incident and a visit from a biohazard “cleaning” team whose job it is to prevent the spread of un-making.

Vanja has a suitcase because she’s just arrived from the central colony of Essre. She’s been sent by her company to the more-on-the-frontier Amatka to investigate colony’s hygiene practices/needs in order to see if they might purchase products made in Essre instead of just using their own. Amatka is, as noted, is more on the fringes, set out on the tundra at the edge of a large lake that freezes nightly, and this cold, bleak, frozen setting not only adds to the atmosphere of the novel (here’s that Insomnia kinship), but also does a nice job of mirroring the frozen lake of Vanja’s life. She’s a lonely, withdrawn person, so noticeably thus that another character quickly picks up on this, telling her, “you don’t exactly seem like you enjoy being around people. I mean, this whole thing of making small talk and being friendly.” That character is Nina, who shares the house Vanja is staying at with mushroom-farmer Ivar (the laconic father of Nina’s children) and retired doctor Ulla, the classic sharp-tongued/sharp-minded old lady who says what she thinks and damn the reactions.

Mysteries abound in Amatka: what has happened in Vanja’s past to make her the person she is, what was the catastrophe that wiped out the fifth colony, why do objects in this world un-become and can they re-become (what they were or something else), what does Ulla know and why isn’t she telling, what happened a few years back that caused the colony to lose over a hundred inhabitants, why is the central committee becoming so stingy about the world’s stockpile of “real paper,” is the tundra/this planet really as empty as the colonists are all told it is, who made those pre-existing weird-looking structures the original colonists came across, and a few more that I won’t mention so as to avoid spoilers. The raising of questions and the unspooling of answers (or quasi-answers) is deftly handled, as is Vanja’s growing determination to get to the bottom of things, despite the constant background social pressure of conformity, the more tangible fear of arrest, and the more personal conflict that Nina, with whom Vanja falls into a tenderly depicted romance, is adamant that one needn’t speak of such things or ask such questions (and certainly never try to find answers). Why Nina is like that is yet another mystery. Nina’s staunch “don’t go there” attitude is counterbalanced by Ulla’s clear subversive bent, a stance shared, though far less loudly, by the local librarian. I can’t say the mysteries themselves are particularly compelling, but something about the pacing, Tidbeck’s stark, simply-on-its surface prose, and the general atmospheric nature of the work pulled me along, or perhaps “lulled” me along would be a more accurate description.

The book is relatively slim, at least compared to most of my sci-fi/fantasy reading, and thanks to the repressive nature of the society and the characters’ themselves, who are often tersely to the point, there’s a sense of distance between reader and character. But that isn’t to say the characters are not fully three-dimensional, complex creations. They are that, and despite not having a lot of pages or words, one gets a good sense of individual personalities, their fears and motivations (though not always right away). I wouldn’t call them vivid, but more efficiently detailed in their domestic humanity.

Conceptually, the book raises some big questions. The most obvious ones, thanks to the naming/marking rituals, has to do with the power of language and the communal nature of reality. At first, it seems that language is a defense, but if one can keep something what it “is” by naming it, that begs the question, can one then make it something it is not? Or make something new? And is that sort of freedom/power of imagination something to be reveled in or feared and so controlled (it’s probably not coincidence that the best known dissenter is a poet)? Does one have the right to not play by society’s agreed upon rules if by doing so one threatens not just the society’s structures but people’s actual existence? And what sort of existence is it anyway—where does that sliding scale or inverse relationship between the quality of the lives lived versus the willingness to break the society leave us? Another question is does it make sense to be bound by tradition/history in a new world/era (a literal new world in the book’s case, but our own world is regularly recreated—the 21st century is not the 20th or the 17th)? Does a rigid adherence to keeping things as they are keep us safe or limit us?

Amatka is a tough book for me to recommend. I can see lots of people not caring much for it—finding the dystopic elements too familiar and, conversely, the more original aspects too weird and vague; finding the prose too simple and straightforward, finding the characters not particularly engaging. But while I can totally get those responses, for me there was just something about the bleak empty setting combined with the distant but oddly interesting main character and a host of even more interesting questions regarding language, identity, reality, and society, that I’d say pick it up and give it a few chapters (definitely a few chapters as the book spends I’d say a little too much time on the hygiene details early on) and see if it grows on you like it did on me.

I was in love with this book. It was strange, it had a mysterious tone to it that made me not want to put it down. It was a smooth read and it had LGBTQ and mental health elements. It also made some sociopolitical statements, and you all know how I adore those. So what happened? The ending happened.

The author led me by the hand thorough the strange and the mysterious, and I was constanly wondering if the ending was going to make it SciFi or Fantasy because I could not tell. She intrigued me with secrets, mysterious skin diseases, odd happenings, and quirky characters... and then the end unfolded and laid there like a damp limp rag; a smelly, damp limp rag.

The ending would have been precisely what I would have expected if this was the first book in a series, but it is a standalone. Nothing came together, nothing was explained, it didn't clarify the snippets of history that were given for the colonies. Heck, it didn't even give a breath of a clue why they had skin problems; at least give me that. The finale left me wishing I had not read the story because what was the point? What a waste of time.

Amatka is a novel of quiet imagination, a story set in the near future in an unknown place, a greatly sanitized dystopian of a five-colony world run by totalitarian rule and within it, a culture of repressed citizens who are told half-truths about their history, and secretly punished for what is considered to be subversion.

The narrative of the book is sterile with purpose, a tool to emphasize the sterile culture of its characters’ lives as dictated by the strict rules they must abide by in order to survive from repeatedly speaking, writing, and naming items in order to ensure their structural integrity.

The language in the book, too, is extraordinary in its naming originality from the five colonies: the administrative Colony One, Essre; the scientific Colony Two, Balbit; the industrious Colony Three, Odek; the agricultural Colony Four, Amatka; and Colony Five, which mysteriously burned by fire.

As each colony itself holds its specific communal rules, the characters’ personalities and roles in the book are also strategically placed from: Brilars’ Vanja Essre Two, an information assistant to the Essre Hygiene Specialists (EHS) sent on duty to Amatka to study the hygiene habits of its colonists, a role assigned to her because of her quiet discretion; Ulltors’ Nina Amatka Four, a medic at the Amatka Clinic; Jonids’ Ivar Four, a farming technician; Sarols’ Ulla, a retired general practitioner; and Samins’ Evgen, the sentimental librarian for Amatka’s Library of books and letters.

While the plot of the novel is not the star of the book, the new dystopian world in which the novel resides is enough to keep readers intrigued from its Commune Office, Mushroom Farm, mycopaper, mycoprotein, scrap-by-dates, and pale polypores.

The book, like its totalitarian Committee, holds its secrets. There are those who have been punished for accused subversion, operations done to distort language, and lobotomies meant to silence a dissident few. There is a Locked Archive filled with hard truths and fewer more with access to it. There is a lake that thunders as it thaws each morning as readily as it freezes at night—without the temperature decreasing.

The cultural order and refrain of the people of this New World is harsh in its dystopian reality. The tone is as grey as its skies and setting; its climate as harsh as its protocols; and though its technological advances are new and fantastic, it’s this technological fervour that keeps the people in a constant state of fear, denial, and panic.

The book is in its dystopian tradition, a stark glimpse of what the future could hold for a people who fail to care for its natural resources and resist learning from its cultural grievances, moving from a natural free society to a totalitarian one—one where there is more than the loss of freedom at stake.

***
Characters: 3.5 stars
Plot: 3.5 stars
Language/Narrative: 3.5 stars
Dialogue: 3.5 stars
Pacing: 3.5 stars
Cover Design: 3 stars

***
Zara's Overall Rating: 3.5 stars

***
Note: The author's bio and where to connect with the author on social media is included in my review.

Is this sci=fi, is it specualative, is it dystopian? This is translated from Swedish; does that make it Scandinavian noir? It's all of the above. This is an odd book in many ways but it kept my interest despite not being my usual genre (no matter what you call it.). I was most impressed with how Tidbeck created her world and Vanja in such a compact descriptive way. You won't read anything quite like this anytime soon. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC which allowed me to experience this unusual and intriguing novel.

Amatka by Karin Tidbeck is a highly recommended science fiction novel that explores the power of language; it is translated from the original Swedish.

Vanja lives in a world that has four surviving colonies from the original five. She is an information assistant living in the colony of Essre when she is sent by her company to Amatka. Once there she is supposed to survey the residents on their use of hygiene products and their need for new products and willingness to try new brands. Vanja is assigned to stay in a local house with only three other residents, Nina, Ivar, and Ulla.

Everything in this world is made of some kind of mushroom/fungus. All citizens in this weird world are required to mark and name all of their things or they will risk having the objects lose their shape and turn into a kind of sludge that must be cleaned up by a special crew. It seems that in Amatka, the citizens need to do this much more often than they do in Essre.

Amatka is also much colder than she expected and the residents seem to be monitored much more intently for any subversive activity. Vanja is only expecting to be in Amatka for a short time before she returns to Essre, so she concentrates on doing her job. While doing so she notices that something seems a bit strange with the residents, and the truth about some mysterious events are not discussed.

This is a rather odd novel that immediately brought to mind Jeff VanderMeer's fungus-laden Ambergris novels (City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek, and Finch), as mushrooms seem to play an important role in Amatka too. With a translated version it's difficult to know if some of the oddness is from the translation or the writing. Certainly Tidbeck does not explain everything that is happening and some of what you will come away with is supposition based on what you think you know.

Dystopian, sure, but much more science fiction as it is set in a different world that has been colonized. The colonies seem to be based on a Soviet-style system, but other than that little is explained about how these people arrived in this world. The naming of things or writing down their names could lead to all sorts of questions about controlling our environment and the meaning behind language. This is an interesting novel, but not likely for a wide audience.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Penguin Random House.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2017/07/amatka.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2047583484

This book was so thought provoking. I'll admit I've been reading many a dystopian novel lately. You can blame the times we live in. This idea is utterly original and I'm glad I read it. This is one of those stories I'll be thinking about long after I finished it. In our world words have a certain meaning, though in a different way. Words can provoke, hurt, heal and effect people in so many different ways. This is an important book about questioning anything and everything. The government isn't always right and suppressing people never works. There will always be people who look for the truth. Exquisite, novel and highly recommended.

Tidbeck's Jagannath is one of my favorite books, so I was definitely excited to get the opportunity to read and review Amatka. It definitely didn't disappoint, and I can happily say that I loved Amatka. Tidbeck is wonderful at creating detailed, atmospheric worlds, and the world of Amatka is no difference. The story is brisk and will hook you in from the very beginning. If you're a fan of Tidbeck, you'll enjoy this one. This would also be a great starting point for people who haven't read any of her other works.

The only thing I will say is that Amatka doesn't spell everything out - not everything is always explained. If you need clean, neat books that make sure everything is wrapped up and spelled out, you might not enjoy this one. For everyone else, highly recommended.

Original and strange. A dystopia in which all things have to regularly be reminded what they are, or they will turn to gloop..

I like science fiction and this is a pretty interesting example of how the genre can successfully cross into literary fiction. The author follows the rules of the world she creates very carefully, without calling undue attention to it. The characters are developed enough, without distracting us from the strange events that are the real focus of this book.

I read about 10% of this one before setting it aside. It just didn't work for me.

Karin Tidbeck's move to the publishing big leagues is a strong debut novel. Jeff and Ann Vandermeer's Cheeky Frawg Press introduced Tidbeck to the English-reading world with her short story collection Jagannath, a solid collection of strange tales. Amatka seems likely to bring her more attention.

Amatka is a relatively short novel by comparison to the doorstops being published these days; not only that, it tells a complete story. If you look at this as a science fiction novel (which it more or less is), that may seem unusual; if you look at it as literary fiction (which it also is), that's not so odd.

The novel doesn't do many infodumps, so the stories of the protagonist and her world unfold slowly. Though there are some similarities to Philip K. Dick's work, Stanislaw Lem's Solaris may be a better point of reference.

Tidbeck's prose is clean and well-crafted (if I'm not mistaken, she translates her own work from Swedish). Her characters are well drawn, the relationships believable. and the deteriorating world already has reviewers reaching for terms like "collectivist dystopia." It's the kind of story that can lend itself to suggestions of multiple allegorical meanings dealing with language, politics, and more, but at the same time it builds a sense of mystery that pays off while leaving some ambiguity. It's a satisfying read, one that should get Tidbeck attention from inside and outside the world of genre fiction. Definitely recommended.