"Swastika Night", História alternativa,1937. Fala-nos de um futuro em que o mundo é controlado por um governo alemão fascista, onde a mulher foi simplesmente eliminada como pessoa, passando a tratar-se apenas de uma máquina de fazer crianças, ganhando menos respeito que os animais. Também toda a História, cultura, literatura, imaginação, criatividade e educação foram extintas, deixando os indivíduos praticamente desprovidos de qualquer outro sentimento que não o patriotismo fanático. Mas Alfred atreve-se a ir mais longe, a sentir mais e, acima de tudo, a questionar aquilo que não entende. À partida, e à vista do amigo Hermann, alemão de corpo e alma, essa curiosidade é não só herética como muito perigosa. Mas à medida que, com a ajuda preciosa do Cavaleiro Von Hess, o inglês lhe conta mais sobre as suas visões da vida para além do regime, Hermann começa a compreender que grande parte do que lhe ensinaram é baseado em mentiras e omissões. ( )

It says Murray Constantine on the cover but it’s sort of an open secret that Constantine was a pseudonym of Katherine Burdekin, so I have to wonder why Gollancz chose to use the pseudonym on the SF Masterwork edition. I mean, no one remembers either name these days, so it makes no fucking difference. Use her real name, make it obvious the writer was female. Anyway, the story is set 700 years after the Axis won WWII, and and Europe is all Greater Germany. People – well, men… as women are considered subhuman and treated like animals – are divided into Nazis, Germans and everyone else. A clever Englishman visits Germany on pilgrimage and hooks up with a German friend who had worked in the UK. Through him, he meets the local Nazi lord, who reveals a secret history. Hitler was not tall and blond and godlike, and women were once considered equal to men… There are perhaps a few people in the US, or members of UKIP, who may be surprised by these revelations, but to the human race it’s the sort of reveal which has almost no dramatic impact. It’s not helped by the fact the narrative consists mostly of characters lecturing each other. The misogyny is baked into the world but, despite suggesting homosexual relationships are both common and unremarkable, there’s a still a whiff of homophobia. Swastika Night is not a great book. Had its profile remained prominent in the decades since it was first published, it might have been considered an important book. Sadly, it was all but forgotten. It’s good that the SF Masterworks series has chosen to publish it – although it would have been better thad they used the author’s real name – and it is scarily more relevant now than it has been since the 1940s… It’s an historical document, it reads like an historical document… but it’s a sad reflection on our times that its premise is no longer historical… ( )

Une excellente uchronie, d'autant plus incroyable si on imagine qu'elle a été écrite en 1937.
Une réflexion sur la violence, la place des femmes dans la société, l'importance du langage et l'espoir malgré tout qui passe par le livre...
Je conseille vraiment cette lecture, très forte. ( )

The title page says “by Katharine Burdekin writing as Murray Constantine” though the revelation of the author as Burdekin was not made till many years after the book’s first publication in 1937. The pseudonymous publication may have been because of the threat of repercussions due to her anti-fascist views or for the usual reasons a female might adopt a male name when writing.

Swastika Night is an extrapolation from the time of writing of what Nazism might have led to. Considering the little that was known of fascism’s excesses at the time it was written it is remarkably insightful and prophetic of what unchecked fascism could very well have developed into.

As a result of their victory in the Twenty Year War, seven hundred years in the future, Germany and Japan still rule the world between them. In Germany and its European, Middle Eastern and African dominions Hitler is a God. A seven foot tall blond God, who never had anything to do with women. Women in this future Germany have no purpose except for breeding - and no inclination for anything else as it has been bred out of them.

The book is told mainly through the eyes of an ordinary German, Hermann, and the English friend, Alfred, he made when posted to England five years before. Alfred is on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land (Germany) and attracts the interest of the local ruler the Knight Friedrich von Hess who is the keeper of a secret about the real historical Hitler. Through von Hess, the author lays out how a relatively nondescript man was transformed into godhood and historical truth obliterated to ensure the domination of the party line. In its depiction of the manipulation of history this prefigures some of the works of Philip K Dick.

Burdekin’s appreciation of the most important struggle Nazism was to face is shown by the line, “But Russia after the most tremendous struggle in history, was finally beaten.” We also have, “von Hess says the Germans have always been inclined to hysteria” and “unshakable, impregnable empire has always been the dream of virile nations.” This of course can be read as an indictment of virility.

There is not much by way of action and a large part of the book is given over to philosophising but it never fails to maintain the reader’s interest.

As an illustration of the dangers of totalitarianism, of the vigilance needed to maintain standards of truth, Swastika Night is as potent as 1984 and, in 2017, sadly as relevant a critique in the here and now as it was when first published. ( )

This dystopian novel was written in 1937, 12 years before George Orwell published 1984. Over the years, Burdekin’s novel has been linked to other dystopian novels with a similar feminist perspective such as The Handmaid’s Tale and Herland. The story is set in a feudal vision of Europe several centuries after Hitler’s National Socialists have won the Twenty Year War. Inferior races have been wiped out, rape is no longer a crime, and the sole function of women is breeding.