Karen Lord: The Best of All Possible Worlds

[bibliogramma]

Karen Lord's second novel, The Best of All Possible Worlds, is almost completely unlike her first novel, the fantasy Redemption in Blue which was based on a Senegalese folk tale; the most important similarity is that both are amazingly captivating, entertaining and subtly thought-provoking.

The Best of All Possible Worlds is a science fiction novel that explores such diverse issues as interspecies and intercultural relations, loss, mourning and healing, the limits of cultural relativism, the paradoxes of time travel, and recovering from abuse. The novel begins with the destruction of the planet Sadira, and follows a small group of male survivors as they search for a new home where they can preserve their culture on Cygnus Beta, where several expatriate communities of Sadiri exist.

What follows is a picaresque novel in which the travelling Sadiri refugees discover how these communities have changed Sadiri traditions; both the structure of the novel and the title suggest that Lord intends a reference to Voltaire's satirical masterpiece Candide, but the tone here is less of a satire and more of a meditation on how different cultures and peoples can live together, and how to balance cultural relativism with human rights.