The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Fifteen years after the Axis powers won World War II, the United States is divided between Japanese and German rule, and Americans have adjusted with unnerving ease. Philip K. Dick follows a handful of ordinary people, an antiques dealer and a jewelry maker among them, rather than leaders, which is exactly what makes it political: occupation as daily compromise. Inside the novel circulates a forbidden book imagining that the Allies won, and Dick uses it to ask how much any account of history is a story people agree to believe. It won the 1963 Hugo Award for Best Novel. The ending is famously open, which suits discussion better than tidy plotting.