The Years of Rice and Salt

As Bold Bardash, a military horseman, rides west across the steppe and on to the Magyar Plain, he comes across a town in which everyone lies dead.

Long dead. Plague has struck Europe. So die the ancestors of Da Vinci, Newton, and Shakespeare. An alternate history of the last seven hundred years, a world vastly different from the one we know, the past 700 years as it could have been… The Years of Rice and Salt. It is the fourteenth century and one of the most apocalyptic events in human history is set to occur, the coming of the Black Death. History teaches us that a third of Europe’s population was destroyed. But what if? What if the plague killed 99 percent of the population instead? How would the world have changed? A look at the history that could have been, a history that stretches across centuries, a history that sees dynasties and nations rise and crumble, a history that spans horrible famine and magnificent innovation. These are the years of rice and salt.

This is a universe where the first ship to reach the New World travels across the Pacific Ocean from China and colonisation spreads from west to east. This is a universe where the Industrial Revolution is triggered by the world’s greatest scientific minds, in India. This is a universe where Buddhism and Islam are the most influential and practiced religions and Christianity is merely a historical footnote.

Through the eyes of soldiers and kings, explorers and philosophers, slaves and scholars, Robinson renders an immensely rich tapestry. Rewriting history and probing the most profound questions as only he can, Robinson shines his extraordinary light on the place of religion, culture, power, and even love on such an Earth. From the steppes of Asia to the shores of the Western Hemisphere, from the age of Akbar to the present and beyond, here is the stunning story of the creation of a new world.