The story occurs in 1962, fifteen years after the end of the war in 1947, and depicts the life of several characters living under Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany as they rule a partitioned United States.

The eponymous character is the mysterious author of a novel-within-the-novel entitled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a subversive alternative history of the war in which the Allied Powers are victorious.

Dick's thematic inspirations include the alternative history of the American Civil War, Bring the Jubilee (1953), by Ward Moore, and the I Ching, a Chinese book of divination that features in the story and the actions of the characters.

In the alternative history imagined in The Man in the High Castle, Giuseppe Zangara assassinates President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, resulting in the continuation of the Great Depression and the policy of United States non-interventionism at the start of World War II in 1939.

In San Francisco, in the Pacific States of America, Japanese judicial racism has enslaved black people and reduced the Chinese residents to second-class citizens.

Childan can not fulfil Tagomi's original request (a civil war recruiting poster) but is able to present various alternatives because he is well-stocked with counterfeit antiques made by the metal works Wyndam-Matson Corporation.

Recently fired from his job at a Wyndam-Matson factory, Frank Frink (formerly Fink) is a secret Jew and war veteran who agrees to join a former co-worker to start a business making and selling jewelry.

Meanwhile, in the Rocky Mountain States, Frank's ex-wife, Juliana Frink, works as a judo instructor in Canon City, Colorado and, in her private life, has begun a sexual relationship with Joe Cinnadella, an Italian truck driver and ex-soldier.

She discovers that Abendsen lives with his family in a normal house, having abandoned the High Castle because of a changed outlook on life; thus the possibility of being assassinated no longer worries him.

As an alternative history of the Second World War, wherein the Allies defeat the Axis Powers, the Nazi regime bans The Grasshopper Lies Heavy in the South, whereas the Pacific States of America allow the publication and sale of the counterfactual novel.

The next president, Rexford Tugwell, moves the American Pacific Fleet from Pearl Harbor, saving it from attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy, which ensures that the country is better equipped to fight the war.

[2]: 70  Having retained most of their military-industrial capabilities, the United Kingdom contributes more to the Allied war effort, which facilitates the defeat of Erwin Rommel in the North African Campaign.

Ten years after the war, still headed by Winston Churchill, the British Empire becomes militaristic, anti-American and establishes prison camps in India for Chinese subjects considered disloyal.

[2]: 169–172 Dick said that he imagined the story of The Man in the High Castle (1962) from his reading of the novel Bring the Jubilee (1953), by Ward Moore, which is an alternative history of the U.S. civil war won by the Confederacy.

Despite his job as Miss Lonelyhearts, the reporter seeks consolation in religion, sexual promiscuity, rural vacations and much work; no activity provides him with a sense of personal authenticity derived from his intellectual and emotional engagement with the world.

[5][6][7] In a review of a paperback reprint of the novel, Robert Silverberg wrote in Amazing Stories magazine, "Dick's prose crackles with excitement, his characters are vividly real, his plot is stunning".

[9]In her introduction to the Folio Society edition of the novel, Ursula K. Le Guin writes that The Man in the High Castle "may be the first, big lasting contribution science fiction made to American literature.

"[22] Dick said that he had "started several times to write a sequel" but progressed little, because he was too disturbed by his original research for The Man in the High Castle and could not mentally bear "to go back and read about Nazis again".

[24] Eventually, Dick admitted that the proposed sequel became an unrelated novel, The Ganymede Takeover, co-written with Ray Nelson (known for writing the short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" filmed as They Live).