Reply #45: The same one I always recommend...The Years Of Rice And Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson.

[Forkboy]

The book is set between about AD 1405 (783 solar years since the Hegira, by the Islamic calendar used in the book), and AD 2002 (1423 after Hegira). In the eighth Islamic century, almost 99 per cent of the population of medieval Europe is wiped out by the Black Death (rather than the approximately 30-60% that died in reality). This sets the stage for a world without Christianity as a major influence.

The novel follows a jāti of three to seven main characters and their reincarnation through time, in very different cultural and religious settings. The book features Muslim, Chinese (Buddhist, Daoist, Confucianist), American First Nations, and Hindu culture, philosophy and everyday life. It mixes sophisticated knowledge about these cultures in the real world with fictional developments, partly resembling the actual history, but shifted and reflected by different cultural settings.

The main characters, marked by identical first letters throughout their reincarnations, but changing in gender, culture-nationality and so on, struggle for progress in each life. Each chapter has a different style, reflecting its setting.

Key issues of the novel are hybrid cultures; Progress and science; alternate history; philosophy, religion and human nature; politics; feminism and equality of all humans; and the struggle between technology and sustainability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_of_Rice_and_Salt



I got so much out of this book and have read it twice in the last few years, with plans to read it again.