The Years of Rice and Salt was published by Bantam in 2002. Robinson’s premise: the Black Death kills not one-third but ninety-nine percent of Europe’s population, effectively removing Christian civilization from history. The novel follows world history from the fourteenth century to the present through ten chapters, each set in a different century.
The structural device: a group of souls — identified by the first letter of their names (B, K, I, S) — reincarnate repeatedly, meeting in the bardo (Tibetan Buddhist afterlife) between lives and carrying forward traces of their accumulated experience. Bold (a Mongol soldier), Kyu (a Chinese scholar), Ibrahim (a Muslim scientist), and others appear in various incarnations as the centuries unfold.
Without Europe, the world develops differently: Islam and China become the dominant civilizations; India develops its own modernization path; the Americas are colonized by Chinese fleets and Muslim traders rather than Europeans; the scientific revolution occurs in Samarkand rather than London; the industrial revolution begins in Kerala. The novel culminates in a world war between China and the Dar al-Islam in the twentieth century — nuclear weapons are used — followed by a feminist-led reconstruction.
Collecting The Years of Rice and Salt
First edition (Bantam, New York, 2002): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $30–$60
- Signed first: $80–$150