{"product_id":"hard-to-be-a-god-volume-19-paperback","title":"Hard to Be a God: Volume 19 - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEarth sends observers to a medieval world and forbids them to interfere. Then the purges start.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eShelf note: A sixty-year-old novel that reads like it was written this morning.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnton has spent years in the kingdom of Arkanar posing as Don Rumata, a dissolute nobleman with an inexplicable talent for swordsmanship. His actual job is to watch: to record a feudal society without altering its course, per the strict non-interference doctrine of the Institute of Experimental History.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen Don Reba takes power and begins systematically killing everyone literate. Scholars, doctors, bookbinders. Rumata has a spacecraft, weapons beyond anything Arkanar can imagine, and explicit orders to do nothing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Strugatskys wrote this in 1964, and Soviet readers understood precisely what they were reading. It remains the sharpest argument in science fiction about the ethics of watching: whether restraint in the face of atrocity is wisdom or cowardice, and whether a god who intervenes is still worth being. With a foreword by Hari Kunzru.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eDetails\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eAuthors:\u003c\/strong\u003e Arkady and Boris Strugatsky\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eForeword:\u003c\/strong\u003e Hari Kunzru\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eFormat:\u003c\/strong\u003e Paperback\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eISBN:\u003c\/strong\u003e 9781613748282\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"Chicago Review Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67967235260615,"sku":"9781613748282","price":15.49,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0811\/0741\/9335\/files\/9781613748282.jpg?v=1792520341","url":"https:\/\/spineboundbooks.com\/products\/hard-to-be-a-god-volume-19-paperback","provider":"Spinebound Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}