I Am Alive and You Are Dead

Emmanuel Carrere. Metropolitan Books, $26 (336pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-5464-4

French screenwriter and novelist Emmanuel Carrere (The Adversary) relies heavily on analysis of the novels of SF giant Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) in his painful and unconventional biography, I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick, translated by Timothy Bent. Carrere portrays Dick as a Cold War Don Quixote, flailing at the totalitarianism he suspected was taking over 1950s-1960s America. Aimed at hardcore Dick fans, it's a powerful treatment of a difficult subject. Agent, Fran ois Samuelson Intertalent.

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