Humpty Dumpty in Oakland

Between 1960 and 1962, Dick wrote at least four of the half-dozen novels for which he will be remembered… The fourth title from that period of compulsive creative frenzy is Humpty Dumpty in Oakland, the book in which Dick reaches the end of his tether as an inhabitant of a region of the American continent… a sustained memorial vignette to the final days if America’s innocence, in which it is the small people who are seen to bear the cost of surviving into the present. It is indeed a very contemporary book, this tale of devouring nescience. In their anomie, their bewildered sourness, their moments of fragile decency, and in their need to believe the next story they think they understand, Dick’s small people are surely current in his land. – Times Literary Supplement

Philip K. Dick (since dead, to the loss of more than science fiction as this clever laconic novel proves) spins a black comedy of misunderstandings with considerable technique and a strong whiff of futility – The Guardian

Odd and affecting… What it shares with his other novels is a steely sympathy for the battered loners whose story it tells… it is often difficult to disentangle delusion from reality, as in a novel by Patricia Highsmith. The plot is full of surprises and dislocations, with a weird menace running throughout. It also has a political dimension. – The Observer

Front cover illustration by Ean Taylor (Paladin Edition).