author: Paolo Bacigalupi

The Windup Girl is a Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel by the author Paolo Bacigalupi and deals with a future where gene-manipulation of foods and diseases are weapons used for economic warfare in a collapsing, dangerous world. The story is set in a future Thailand that is plagued by flooding, starvation, oil and food depletion as well as the extinction of many types of vegetables and fruits. Large corporations wage war against each other through genetic manipulation of crop diseases to annihilate food supplies. It is a hard and unstable world.

http://windupstories.com/author-info/paolo-bacigalupi/

The story follows Anderson Lake who is a calorie representative for AgriGen but poses as a factory manager. He is a spy and looks for vegetables or fruits that were supposed to be extinct. He also tries to manipulate the volatile political system in Thailand by negotiating with a powerful political person named Akkarat, who is the trade minister. The trade minister Akkarat is in a power struggle for control of Thailand with General Pracha.

Another important character is Hock Seng. He is a Chinese immigrant who is Anderson´s secretary. Chinese immigrants live a very hard life and are expected to starve. Hock Seng needs his job in order to survive and is not well treated by a stressed out Anderson. He used to be a successful businessman but lost everything, even his family.

The most interesting character is Emiko. She is a member of the underclass derogatively known as a “windup” or “new person” because she is genetically modified. Of all the characters she is stuck in the harshest of conditions. She is trapped in humiliating slavery with the terrible prospect of her being eventually mulched. New people are badly treated, sold and killed regularly in this world. As a new person she has no rights.  She hears of a new person colony in the north and longs to flee there. As the story progresses, we the reader, watch the human society collapse and by the end we can´t help but wonder if the new people are better adapted to survive in this new, emerging world.

I have to say the book “The Windup Girl” was nothing less than fantastic. The ending is unpredictable and hopeful and the story takes you through a world in collapse were the characters are desperate and complex. It´s the type of book you´ll want to read again. This is the best book I´ve read in 2013. I highly, highly recommend it.

(commentary by  www.ink2quill.com)

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