By coincidence, in the past
week two readers* have emailed me questioning whether Britain’s defeat at
Dunkirk really is the DIVERGENCE POINT of the book. (As a quick reminder the
divergence point in a work of alternative history is the moment where events
take a different path to our own version of reality.) Those two emails were
actually very astute, and follow on from similar messages I’ve had over the
years. So although I planned not to reveal this until a later date (if ever),
today I’ve decided to confess all.
 |
| Robert Frost would approve... |
Dunkirk is not the true divergence point of the
book. It is a symptom of an earlier cause. It is the place where geopolitical
history changes but the real shift – a minuscule fissure in the past – predates
it. If, thus far, I have promoted a slight falsehood it is because I have been
playing to an audience; fulfilling the marketing needs of the book (though in
my defence all the clues as to what’s really going on are in the text). As
regular readers of this blog will know by now, nothing is ever quite what it
appears with Afrika Reich!
So what is the true
divergence point?
I’m not going to tell
you for two reasons: 1) better you work it out yourself 2) rather unfairly,
it’s more fully explored in Book 2. However, I believe world events are not
decided at the macro level but micro. History is determined not when Caesar
crosses the Rubicon – but earlier, in the accretion of childhood experiences
that motivate the crossing in the first place.
Whilst you’re puzzling all
this out (or heading back to Facebook, which is probably more entertaining
anyway) I’ll leave you with a clue:
*One in Iowa, America; one
in Venezuela – hello/hola if you’re reading!
