Pages : 196
Overall Mark : 8/10
Seven hundred years after Nazism achieved power, Hitler is worshipped as a god. The fascist Germans and Japanese struggle to maintain their populations. An Englishman named Alfred is on a German pilgrimage. According to official history, Hitler is a tall, blond god who personally won the war. Alfred is astounded when shown a photograph of Hitler before a crowd. He is shocked that Hitler was a small man with dark hair and a paunch. And Alfred’s discovery may mean his death...
MURRAY CONSTANTINE (1896-1963)
A pseudonym for the feminist SF writer Katharine Burdekin. Born Katharine Cade, she was the younger sister of Rowan Cade who created the Minack Theatre in Cornwall. In addition to her Utopian and Dystopian fiction, she wrote several children’s books, including The Children’s Country under the pen name Kay Burdekin. Her best-known work remains Swastika Night, written as Murray Constantine – a pseudonym that was not confirmed until two decades after her death.
VERDICT
I actually enjoyed this book, with its bleak look at a future that could have happened if Hitler had won World War II. It’s amazing to read when you realise that this book was actually published before the war had even begun, so Burdekin not only comes up with a dystopian future based on a fiction but also predicts the war itself. The idea that Nazism moves its focus onto women once it has all but wiped out anyone else they deem unfit to be part of the so-called master race is a scary one as women are portrayed here as being treated like animals or something almost sub-human. An interesting parable of what could quite easily have been.
