Useful Idiots - Hardcover

Mark, Jan

3.34

94 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385750234 ISBN 13: 9780385750233

Publisher: David Fickling Books, 2004

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Set in the not-so-distant future, where the lowlands of Britain are flooded, this beautifully written novel explores a world where archaeology is banned for fear of the social unrest it might cause. One bleak morning, a storm across the North Sea stirs up a human skull, which starts a chain of events that forever changes the lives of those involved. It is the Inglish, a remnant tribe on the edge of Europe, that will be affected the most.

This is a compelling vision of England as it might be in the hand of award-winning author Jan Mark.

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Review:

Imagine the United Kingdom in the year 2255, flooded due to global warming and renamed the Rhine Delta Islands (RDI), an outpost of the United States of Europe. In this new federalist society, recorded history has largely been erased and humans are genetically modified to be homogeneous--ageless, disease-free, and generally flawless. Except of course for the twenty thousand Aboriginals living in outlying marshes who cling to old human ways and the "Inglish" culture. In Jan Mark's Useful Idiots, these two societies collide when archaeologists, including a young graduate student named Merrick Korda, discover an undated skeleton on Aboriginal land, the remains of a man who was shot while robbing graves for mysterious pearls. Korda's work on the case becomes politically and personally dangerous--archaeology has been deemed a lost science that can only stir up trouble in a post-Anarchy world without race or nation. Readers will be captivated as Merrick dodges invisible enemies, scours the marshes for clues, explores his own humanity, and engages in a gruesome experiment on his own body that he hopes will illuminate secrets of the past. Mark raises questions about identity, ethnicity, education, technology, the notion of "useful idiots," and much more in this haunting, dark, suspenseful novel. --Karin Snelson

About the Author:

Jan Mark attended Canterbury College of Art in England. She taught in a secondary school in Gravesend for six years before becoming a full-time writer. She has won the Carnegie Medal twice, for Thunder and Lightnings and Handles. The author lives in Oxford, England.

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