Think you know books? Try our new Book Trivia!

Summary and Reviews of Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling

Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling

Qualityland

by Marc-Uwe Kling
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • First Published:
  • Jan 7, 2020, 352 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

What if the perfect world wasn't built for you?

Welcome to QualityLand, the best country on Earth. Here, a universal ranking system determines the social advantages and career opportunities of every member of society. An automated matchmaking service knows the best partners for everyone and helps with the break up when your ideal match (frequently) changes. And the foolproof algorithms of the biggest, most successful company in the world, TheShop, know what you want before you do and conveniently deliver to your doorstep before you even order it.

In QualityCity, Peter Jobless is a machine scrapper who can't quite bring himself to destroy the imperfect machines sent his way, and has become the unwitting leader of a band of robotic misfits hidden in his home and workplace. One day, Peter receives a product from TheShop that he absolutely, positively knows he does not want, and which he decides, at great personal cost, to return. The only problem: doing so means proving the perfect algorithm of TheShop wrong, calling into question the very foundations of QualityLand itself.

Qualityland, Marc-Uwe Kling's first book to be translated into English, is a brilliantly clever, illuminating satire in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and George Orwell that offers a visionary, frightening, and all-too funny glimpse at a near future we may be hurtling toward faster than it's at all comfortable to admit. So why delay any longer? TheShop already knows you're going to love this book. You may as well head to the cash register, crack the covers, and see why that is for yourself.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Although Kling is German, his style of humor as it appears in Jamie Searle Romanelli's excellent English translation is right in line with British comedy sensibilities exhibited in the novels of Doug Adams, Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde (and a bit of Monty Python to boot). Humor is subjective, true, but I can almost guarantee that if you've enjoyed any of these works, you'll like Qualityland. Perhaps more to the point, Kling has the uncanny ability to analyze Western society's current political and technological trends and predict where their trajectories will lead...continued

Full Review Members Only (683 words)

(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Predictions and Paradoxes: Famous Technology Theories

Marc-Uwe Kling's novel Qualityland, which is set in a European country in the near future, incorporates plot points based around human interactions with machines. Throughout the book, references are made to economic, technological and robotics theories that were developed in the 19th and 20th centuries as scientists began to speculate where technology would take humankind.

William JevonsThe Jevons Paradox was named after 19th-century economist William Jevons, who in 1865 noted that when it became less expensive and more efficient to use coal to produce energy, energy consumption actually went up rather than down. He speculated that improved efficiency leads to lower costs, which results in an increase in consumption. A more modern example is that as ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Qualityland, try these:

  • The Candy House jacket

    The Candy House

    by Jennifer Egan

    Published 2023

    About this book

    More by this author

    From one of the most celebrated writers of our time, a literary figure with cult status, a "sibling novel" to her Pulitzer Prize- and ​NBCC Award-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad - an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the quest for authenticity and meaning in a world where memories and identities are no longer private.

  • Klara and the Sun jacket

    Klara and the Sun

    by Kazuo Ishiguro

    Published 2022

    About this book

    More by this author

    Klara and the Sun is a magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro--author of Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day.

We have 8 read-alikes for Qualityland, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
Broken Country (Reese's Book Club)
by Clare Leslie Hall
A love triangle reveals deadly secrets in this thriller for fans of The Paper Palace and Where the Crawdads Sing.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The World's Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant
    by Liza Tully

    A great detective's young assistant yearns for glory, but first they have learn to get along in this delightful feel good mystery.

  • Book Jacket

    The Original
    by Nell Stevens

    In a grand English country house in 1899, an aspiring art forger must unravel whether the man claiming to be her long-lost cousin is an impostor.

  • Book Jacket

    Angelica
    by Molly Beer

    A women-centric view of revolution through the life of Angelica Schuyler Church, Alexander Hamilton's influential sister-in-law.

Win This Book
Win These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas

"[An] atmospheric tale of unexpected hope." —Lisa Wingate, New York Times bestselling author

Enter

Book
Trivia

  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

W the C A the M W P

and be entered to win..