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The book was set on another world, and I believe it was called “world”, where citizens lived in some kind of “shared reality”. If a citizen broke reality by committing murder or something like that, they would be seen by the rest of society as “not real”.

The main character is a female who has committed a crime and is seen as not real. There is also a science element where I believe they are studying some flowers or something.

I think perhaps humans landed on this world and they are meeting them and studying one another.

I read it in a science fiction literature class in undergrad in 2018, and I know it was obscure enough that I couldn’t find any cliff notes (or similar notes) on the book at the time.

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  • Definitely not the same story, but if you want something similarly mind-bending then try The City and the City by China Mieville, where half of the city is seen as not real by the other half, and vice versa.
    – Graham
    Commented 2 days ago

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Probability Moon by Nancy Kress

From the wiki page:

The novel concerns a xenological expedition to the planet World, where aliens live who have developed a strange form of telepathy or collective unconscious, "shared reality", which causes piercing "head-pain" whenever "Worlders" attempt to hold strongly differing opinions.

World's religion focuses on flowers; they believe that their people were created by the First Flower, which descended into the Neury Mountains, and much of their ceremony, both religious and every-day, involves blossoms.

A novelette in the same setting also exists: "The Flowers of Aulit Prison".

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