‘This Great Hemisphere’ is an inventive dystopia of racial repression

I’ll never forget the moment in Colson Whitehead’s novel “The Underground Railroad” when subterranean train tracks first appear stretching off into a dark tunnel. That 19th-century metaphor pounded into iron in the forge of Colson’s mind powers one of the best novels of the 21st century.

Mateo Askaripour attempts a similar maneuver in his new novel, “This Great Hemisphere.” Inspired by the central conceit of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” Askaripour imagines a future world in which the people of a repressed racial minority are literally see-through.

After a brief, tantalizing prologue set in modern-day New York, Askaripour plunges us into a richly imagined dystopia set in the year 2529. Having emerged from a series of planet-wrecking catastrophes, human society and human biology have been radically reconstituted. In this strict apartheid system, members of the Dominant Population – DPs – exercise total control over all aspects of life by wielding advanced technology and highly prejudicial interpretations of the Bible.

Meanwhile, a physically transparent race of people known as Invisibles subsists as best they can in the forest. Many of them paint their skin “in whatever colors conformed to their mood, the latest trends, or the longing to be something they were not.” A few wear clothes in a misguided effort to curry respectability, but some Invisibles move about naked as mere ripples in the light. They identify each other by their “scentprints” and their “rumoyas,” a kind of “cell spirit” unique to each one. Regarded with a toxic mix of condescension and suspicion, Invisibles must wear metal collars that allow the state to track them, and they’re constantly at risk of being assaulted by DP guards.

Thematically, Askaripour is still peeling the skin off America’s racial inequality, but in song and plumage, “This Great Hemisphere” marks an astonishing evolution from his 2021 debut, “Black Buck.” That audacious comedy, modeled as a self-help memoir, followed the stratospheric rise of an ambitious barista at Starbucks. While “Black Buck” is all slick satire and witty feints, this new fantastical novel is redolent with the scent of exploitation that infuses Margaret Atwood’s work from “The Handmaid’s Tale” to “Oryx and Crake.”

The repressed people whom Askaripour uncovers in the forest learn early “to take it, and take it, and take it, because taking it was what it meant to be Invisible, and only the foolish dared to dream bigger.” One of those foolish dreamers is Sweetmint, the immensely appealing heroine of “This Great Hemisphere.” She’s a precocious young Invisible who was orphaned and later abandoned by her beloved brother. But she’s spent the years since then honing her inventive mind with whatever primitive tools are at her disposal.

In recognition of her cleverness, Sweetmint has been chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the chance to work for Mr. Croger Tenmase. Revered by DPs and Invisibles as the Chief Architect, Mr. Tenmase saved the Northwestern Hemisphere by creating the supposedly “stable” society they live in now. (He reminds me a bit of Adrian Veidt from “Watchmen.”)

After being blessed by her fellow Invisibles in the forest, Sweetmint arrives at Mr. Tenmase’s castle for her first interview with this unnervingly eccentric and iconoclastic legend. “Tell me the things people say that you think I shouldn’t know,” he demands before asking her to drink what might be poison as a test of her purity. With her assistance, but not entirely with her knowledge, Mr. Tenmase hopes to provoke the Big Reset, a political and social crisis of such painful magnitude that the Northwestern Hemisphere will be propelled forward. It’s a mad plan that subordinates the suffering of untold millions in deference to some theoretical future good.

But Sweetmint’s internship with this maniacal scientist is almost immediately interrupted by news that her errant brother has assassinated the leader of this great Hemisphere. Suddenly, Sweetmint finds herself torn between working with Mr. Tenmase and trying to find her brother before he is arrested and executed.

This is all wildly imaginative and often wondrously lush. Askaripour traces the perils of racial betrayal and the rewards of collusion with the point of a bloodied knife. And he sets loose delightfully wicked villains, including a 26th-century J. Edgar Hoover who has dirt on everybody, and a Trumpy politician determined to propel himself to power on a rocket of anti-Invisible hysteria.

But I’ve grown convinced that the soul of wit and dystopias is brevity. After all, novels that exaggerate our social and political ills in some horrific future are the most polemical works of fiction. By design, they’re allergic to nuance. And one can read for only so long under the weight of that heavy hand before developing severe neck pain.

For all its considerable ingenuity, “This Great Hemisphere” suffers from surprisingly poor pacing. While some engaging storylines wither for lack of attention, a sprawling section about Sweetmint’s efforts to track down information on her parents clogs up the center of the novel like a flock of sheep in the road.

And throughout, too much of the dialogue is drawn in the primary colors of the Marvel Universe, as though the novel were struggling against some repressed desire to be a story for young adults. Consider this typically clunky conversation between the security director and his deputy:

“Do you think we’re better than all of the men and women of millennia past who did what they had to do for the sake of survival? I’m sorry to tell you, but we’re not.”

“How can you say that? There’s what is right and what is wrong. You used to know where the line was, but now -”

“Grow up, Deputy. ‘Right’ is man-made, like ‘wrong.’ ”

Fortunately, “This Great Hemisphere” eventually regains its momentum. The political machinations start to jump around like a bag of lit fireworks, and Sweetmint’s quest to save her brother leads her into a truly strange and revelatory realm of Invisible resistance.

So yes, there’s a great story here, but sometimes it’s hard to see.