<P> In the novel's alternate history, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was assassinated by Giuseppe Zangara in 1934 leading to the continuation of the Great Depression and U.S. isolationism during the opening of World War II . Adolf Hitler led Nazi Germany to conquer most of Europe and the Soviet Union, murdering Jews, Roma, Slavs, and other groups . Meanwhile, Imperial Japan occupied China, before taking control of India and Oceania . The Nazis then helped Italy conquer most of Africa . As Japan invaded the U.S. West Coast, Germany invaded the U.S. East Coast and most of South America . By 1947, the U.S. and the remaining Allies surrendered to the Axis, ending the war . </P> <P> By the 1960s, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany are the world's competing superpowers, with Japan establishing the "Pacific States of America" (P.S.A.) from the former Western United States, with the remaining Rocky Mountain States now a neutral buffer zone between the P.S.A. and the Nazi - occupied former Eastern United States . For unknown reasons, Canada remains independent . </P> <P> Hitler, though still alive, is incapacitated from advanced syphilis, and Martin Bormann has become Chancellor of Germany, with Goebbels, Heydrich, Göring, Seyss - Inquart (who oversees the extermination of the peoples of Africa), and other Nazi leaders soon vying to take his place . The Nazis have drained the Mediterranean to make room for farmland, developed and used the hydrogen bomb, and designed rockets for extremely fast travel across the world as well as space, having colonized the Moon, Venus, and Mars . The novel is set mostly in San Francisco in the P.S.A.; here, Chinese residents first appear in the novel as second - class citizens and black people as slaves . The secondary setting of the novel is the Rocky Mountains States, namely the cities of Cañon City, Denver and Cheyenne . </P> <P> In 1962, fifteen years after Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany have won World War II, Robert "Bob" Childan owns an Americana antique shop in San Francisco, California (located in the Japanese - occupied Pacific States of America), which is most commonly frequented by the Japanese, who make a fetish of romanticized American cultural artifacts . Childan is contacted by Nobusuke Tagomi, a high - ranking Japanese trade official, who is seeking a gift to impress a visiting Swedish industrialist named Baynes . Childan's store is stocked in part with antiques from the Wyndam - Matson Corporation, a metalworking company . Frank Frink (formerly Fink), a secretly Jewish--American veteran of World War II, has just been fired from the Wyndam - Matson factory, when he agrees to join a former coworker to begin a handcrafted jewelry business . Meanwhile, Frink's ex-wife, Juliana, works as a judo instructor in Canon City, Colorado (in the neutral buffer zone of Mountain States), where she begins a sexual relationship with an Italian truck driver and ex-soldier, Joe Cinnadella . Throughout the book, many of these characters frequently make important decisions using prophetic messages they interpret from the I Ching, a Chinese cultural import . Many characters are also reading a widely banned yet extremely popular new novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which depicts an alternate history in which the Allies won World War II, a concept that amazes and intrigues its readers . </P>

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