P is for PRORA

Madagascar wasn’t the only country I went to for research. I also visited Germany. Part of this trip included the trip to Dachau which I’ve already described. A few days later I caught the overnight train from Munich to the Baltic Sea and what was once East Germany. My destination was PRORA.

There, in the 1930s, the Nazis built the largest hotel complex in the world, capable of accommodating twenty thousand guests at a time (a record unbroken to this day). It is a truly megalithic structure, the frontage running along the seafront for almost five kilometres. Because it never had a military purpose, nor was it connected to the murderous elements of the regime, the building was not torn down after the war. In fact the authorities didn’t quite know what to do with it, so it has simply been allowed to decay. Much of the site is now in ruins, fenced off with trees growing around it.

One section, however, has been preserved, and it is possible to get a sense of what it was like during its heyday. Each room was 5 by 2.5 metres with twin beds, a wardrobe, sink and beige soft furnishings. ‘A holiday cell’, is how Burton describes it in the book – and he’s not wrong.

But my lasting impression of the place wasn’t the grim rooms but the sheer scale of the exterior. A cycle path runs along the length of the building so it’s possible to ride from one end to the other. At a decent pace it took me twenty minutes, twenty minutes of the same monotonous stone-and-window frontage flashing by. And by. And by...

Prora was meant as a prototype for numerous holiday resorts that the Nazis intended to build around the world if they had won the war – from Sweden to Russia to Argentina and of course Africa which is why it finds its way into my book.

This artist's impression shows what it would have looked like in Africa 

P is also for PHANTOM MENACE MOMENTS

Having spent so long writing Madagaskar there were often moments of doubt, in particular I kept asking the question: is it any good? It would seem a futile activity spending so long on something if it was rubbish. I always reassured myself it worked... but in the back of my head one possibility was impossible to silence.

The Phantom Menace must surely be the most disappointing film experience for my generation. For years we waited for a continuation of the Star Wars saga, but when it finally arrived I, along with millions of others, left the cinema with a heavy heart. Yet I assume Lucas didn’t actively set out to make a bad film. To his own mind it must have worked... it’s just that what he wanted was not what his audience hoped for.

That’s what I kept having as I wrote Madagaskar – PHANTOM MENACE MOMENTS. I thought I was doing a good job... but what would others think? You end up too close to your work to know. At least there’s no Jar Jar Binks...

X is for the Xs ON THE BACK OF UNIFORMS

Before I continue blogging about the research trips for The Madagaskar Plan, time for a brief interlude.

An unexpected consequence of my research was that I amassed more material than I could possibly use. Whilst writing I had to decide how much to include. Put in too little and the world is insufficiently brought to life; too much and the whole thing gets bogged down. However, some of the details I discovered simply had to be used.

One of the most horrific came from my visit to Dachau (see earlier blog here). Most people are familiar with the striped uniforms of prisoners in concentration camps. Inmates were also forced to wear armbands that identified their ‘crimes’. The yellow Stars of David for Jews are well known but there were also red triangles for political prisoners, pink for homosexuals, green for ‘common criminals’ and so on. See image below.

At the exhibition in Dachau there was a further, macabre detail. Those prisoners who were deemed trouble-makers or likely to attempt escape, had uniforms with large Xs painted or sewn on their backs: the idea being that should they try to break out, they would make easy targets for the guards.

I hope Madagaskar is rich with such details. Ninety per cent of them are real (including the most unlikely ones). On occasion I would make something up – either because the record was lacking or I wanted to create something to fit with the ‘aesthetic’ of the novel. If I’ve done my job properly you won’t be able to tell the fake from the real.

T(1) is for TRAVEL, an introduction

Blink... and five months have passed since I last posted an entry on this blog. Where does the time go? It’s quite shocking the speed at which life passes. Anyway, I’m soon to be moving on to pastures new so I’m going to make a determined effort to finish this blog. Expect an entry a week now till it’s done. This new determination is going to start with the TRAVEL I undertook for The Madagaskar Plan.

One of the things that disappointed me about the first book was that I never visited the places I was writing about (see Q is for...). Mostly this was because they were too dangerous. Although Madagascar is one of the poorest countries on the planet, it is safe; so for the second book I was determined to travel there and walk the same ground as my characters. There’s something about being in the real locations that gives you an edge over just reading about them: it’s understanding the topography from a specific point; the hue of the light at sunset; the smell of the earth. All details you could never imagine.

Another reason for making the trip was that some of the locations in The Madagaskar Plan were so obscure there’s very little information about them to be found anywhere, either on-line or in specialist libraries. Going was the only way of knowing.

Early on in the plotting of Madagaskar I knew Burton would follow a certain route and I wanted to travel it myself. So I’m going to dedicate several entries in this blog to the places I visited, starting with Tana, one of the key locations for the exchanges between Hochburg and Globus, the governor of Madagaskar.

Before then you can get a preview of my research trips in this piece I wrote for Bookbrunch:

Click here to read on...

B is for BUTTERSCOTCH

Much is made of the ‘Point of Divergence’ (PoD) in alternative history: the moment where real events end, and imaginary ones begin. Indeed I’ve written about the subject before (see previous blogs). Most people view the PoD of my world as the British defeat at Dunkirk. However, as previously stated I don’t view Dunkirk as the moment history takes a different path; I see it merely as the symptom of a much earlier change. The true deviation is more subtle and comes before the Nazis have taken power.

Some people have asked whether the PoD is the beach burning scene in the first book... those readers are on to something. But to get to the bifurcation you have to go back even further. In The Madagaskar Plan, the true Point of Divergence is revealed for the first time. It is Hochburg’s use of the word ‘BUTTERSCOTCH’ to describe the skin above Eleanor’s heel. I like the idea of how the course of the 20^th Century might turn on a single, illicit adjective. It strikes me as a more intriguing idea than whether a battle was won or lost.

The point I’m trying to make is that history is not decided by headline events, men of destiny or the fate of armies – but in the obscure moments of our personal psychology. We make seemingly unimportant choices and these ripple through time in ways we can never imagine, informing much later decisions that can have profound effects on the world.

The misuse of the word ‘butterscotch’ leads to a multitude of other events and in the prologue of Book 3 you will see the full geopolitical implications of it (which admittedly tie back to Dunkirk). All this grows from that one misplaced word. History pivots on the trivial, the insignificant, as all our lives do. Though I should add, you don’t have to read the book in this way. If you’d prefer to keep Dunkirk as your PoD, that is your privilege as a reader!

B is also for BAYERWEED

One of the main new characters in Madagaskar is Tünscher, an old friend of Burton’s from the Foreign Legion and now an Obersturmführer in the SS. He’s meant as a trickster figure, someone neither the reader, nor Burton, knows whether to trust completely. [Spoiler alert.] To add an extra piquancy to this, and make him more unpredictable, I gave him a drug habit. Tünscher is a user of BAYERWEEDS.

During my research I read how Germans on the Eastern Front were prescribed cigarettes laced with heroin for lung injuries, and how some soldiers started smoking them to counteract the freezing air of the Russian winter.  A trade in these cigarettes soon began and it seemed a likely thing for Tünscher to get involved with. I coined the slang term ‘Bayerweed’ from the German pharmaceutical company that first developed heroin. Its name: Bayer AG.

Deadline!

I love this cartoon from the New Yorker. In fact I find it so apt I had it framed and put on the wall of my office just above my monitor.

These are deadline days! 

For that reason I’m taking a break from this blog so I can concentrate on finishing The Madagaskar Plan.

I’ll be back in the (late) spring, hopefully with the book submitted, and some new entries about the research trips I made for Book 2. These have taken me to three continents – from huge, remote dams in the United States, to a decaying Nazi hotel complex in Germany, synagogues and a ferris wheel in Vienna, and of course south of the equator to Madagascar itself.

In the meantime I hope everyone has a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year... 

V is for VANILLA JEWS (Book 2, update 2)

The original title for the sequel to Afrika Reich was THE VANILLA JEWS. However, my editor didn’t think it sounded commercial enough, so I changed it. For the past couple of years this blog has been about the original book, now it’s time to start looking forward (spoiler free... ish) to the next one.

So what to tell you? When I first started on Book 2, I meant it as a direct follow-up; as the years have passed, however, it has subtly shifted. I now see it as a ‘parallel sequel’ – although it continues events of the first book, and develops the existing story and characters, certain aspects of the original have been dropped. It is significantly more ambitious with an interweaving, multi-stranded narrative and more emphasis on the characters than action (though there’s still a healthy dose of the latter).

The one thing it is not is a rehash of the first book. There’s a lot of pressure in publishing to create a series and/or repeat an initial success – but I have scant interest in this. What engages me is the possibility of doing something different, something unexpected. As I was recently advised by a wily American film producer: ‘never go for the sure thing’. It could be a maxim for Book 2.

A propaganda poster from the 1930s

At the centre of the story is the Nazis’ plan to deport the Jews of Europe to Madagascar, an island off the east coast of Africa. Prior to the Holocaust this was to be their fate. Some historians argue that Madagascar was nothing more than a fantasy or smokescreen to cover up the real killing. However, my research shows detailed preparations were made by the Nazis and that the subject was discussed and approved at the highest level. When Hitler was shown the plan in the summer of 1940 he responded that it was ‘very good’. 

Perhaps more disturbingly, as early as 1938 the British were also in discussions to exile the Jews to Africa. We can never know the truth path of a speculative history but the thought of a Jewish Madagascar is not improbable. As an aside, Madagascar is the world’s largest producer of vanilla – hence the original title; vanilla remains of leitmotif throughout the text.

The odious Globus

With this as the background, other elements in the new book include a deepening of Burton’s back story; the fallout of Hochburg’s invasion of Northern Rhodesia; visiting new realms of German Africa such as the ‘pleasure city’ of Roscherhafen (again based on real plans); glimpsing WBU, the Nazis’ military zone in Siberia; as well as a slew of projected Nazi hardware and several new characters. Among these is Odilo ‘Globus’ Globocnik, a real historical character and the villain of Fatherland – though my depiction of him is very different (and dare I say, more accurate) than Robert Harris’s. Did you know, for instance, that Globocnik was a master horseman, drunkard and singer of Austrian folksongs?

Without wanting to be a hostage to the future the new book will be published in time for Christmas 2014. And the title? When my editor said The Vanilla Jews didn’t work I had an instant alternative (no pun intended). It has already been registered and ISBNed. You heard it here first:

THE

MADAGASKAR PLAN

BOOK 2: Update

Three years ago today, at 9:12am, I sat down with a fresh notebook and started the follow-up to The Afrika Reich. I already had the overarching plot of both Books 2 and 3 but this was the beginning of the detailed work: the official start date.

Publishers like ‘product’, something they can release on a regular basis. My initial contract stipulated I submit the second book in 9 months. That was too fast for me so I asked for it to be extended to 15. My schedule was to be this: 3 months to plan the sequel, 9 to write it, a final 3 to edit. Clearly I have missed this deadline! Even 15 months meant I would have to work more briskly than I’m used to. As readers of this blog will know my preference is to spend 9-12 months preparing a book, then a year to write it. Nevertheless, with an advance to earn out I felt obliged to deliver the book faster than I would have liked. That need for speed ultimately slowed me down.

I never had enough time to plan the book – which meant I started the writing not knowing where I was going. Some writers thrive on this type of spontaneity; I am not one of them. I prefer to have as much as possible pre-planned before I begin. A good analogy would be making a trip from London to Land’s End. My preference would be to work out a detailed route before starting, then having an easy journey. Instead I’ve set out with a notion I needed to travel along the A30, then continue south-west... and not much more. I got lost. Of course, once you’re lost you can get even more lost trying to find your way back to the correct route.

Another difference from the first book is that I did a lot of research up front. This overburdened me with detail. I have a lot of fabulous material but for a while I was bending the narrative to include it, rather than focusing on the plot and using research/details merely to gild the action.

The above is not the only reason for my delay. The last three years have been cruel: punctuated with death and chronic illness. This has not only played havoc with my writing schedule (my literal ability to sit at a desk and concentrate) it has also changed me as a person, made me more aware of the fragility of life. Given the abundance of death in my imagined Nazi Africa, this has impacted on the writing.

The upshot of all this is that I wrote 250 000 words of an initial version of Book 2 before concluding it was a mess. That was my staring-into-the-abyss moment. I recently saw From the Sky Down and there was a line in it that perfectly expresses how I felt at this juncture: ‘You have to reject one expression of yourself first before you get to the next expression. In between you have nothing’.

So I made the decision to put aside what I had written, plan more assiduously and start afresh. Since then things have been easier.

Although the plot of this new version is similar to its earlier incarnation, it has been pieced together differently. Imagine a constellation: the stars are in the same place but the lines linking them have altered drastically. Those expecting a re-hash of the first book may be disappointed. Book 2 is less frenetic than the original, darker, more political and character driven with some truly unexpected scenes... though still with a generous dollop of action and intrigue! I hope it will prove to be the better novel.

I intend to submit the first half to my editor in the coming weeks. Assuming he approves, and I suffer no more calamities, I hope to have the book finished by the end of the year, with a publication date in 2014. 

Q is for QUIMBUNDO

Did you travel to Africa to research the book? This is one of the most common questions I get asked about The Afrika Reich. Although I have lived on the continent (Cairo used to be home) it may surprise you to learn I’ve never been to sub-Saharan Africa.

For the sake of veracity, and in a spirit of reckless adventure Burton would approve of, I did consider travelling to Congo but it soon became apparent this would be extremely foolhardy. With its shifting wars, eastern Congo is one of the most dangerous places on the planet. Kisangani (Stanleystadt in the book) has a force of over 15 000 thousand UN troops to protect it and they rarely venture beyond their compound without armoured support; civilian deaths in the area are rife. When I contacted the Foreign Office about the prospect of going there I was met with an incredulous laugh.

I had a similar problem with Angola. Although its civil war is over and it now has a GDP that is the envy of the West (7.9% last year), outside the capital, Luanda*, it remains a lawless and dangerous place to visit. This is especially true of Lunda Norte – the north-east region where I based Neliah and the Angolan Resistance. Today it is bandit-country, the ground choked with unexploded mines; for some reason you can’t book a trip there on Expedia.

Deep in this region is a real village called QUIMBUNDO, which I made the station Burton arrives at in Chapter 35. Given its latitude with the capital it made a credible spot for the railway to run through. It is the most obscure location I have ever written about. Indeed while working on Afrika Reich, I could only find one photograph of the place:

This lack of on-the-ground research, however, proved less problematic than I initially feared. I acquired a decent collection of contemporary accounts of Congo and Angola as well as drawing on my own peregrinations. I have worked in the Amazon and it was easy to transplant my experiences there – the perma-sweat, clouds of insects, murky forests and broiling concrete cities – to Africa. I must have got something right because, along with the question that began today’s entry, something else people often say to me is: You must know Africa well.

*NB – in case you’re wondering why the spelling is different to the novel Loanda (the colonial name) was changed to Luanda in 1975.

H is for HERERO

I’ve always been fascinated by the great Victorian expansion into Africa and from my previous reading was dimly aware of the HERERO and the fate they suffered under the Germans.  However, it wasn’t until I was fleshing out Neliah’s character and ethnic background that my memory was jogged. 

The Herero are a tribe from South-West Africa in what is modern day Namibia. At the end of the 19^th century this region became a German colony (DSWA, part of the Second Reich) and after years of encroachment on their territory the Herero finally rebelled against the European settlers. The Germans responded with unbridled savagery: slaughtering thousands, leaving many more to starve. Between 1904 and 1907 it has been estimated that 80% of the Herero were wiped out. The parallel between this and Hochburg’s plans for the continent seemed obvious – hence why I made Neliah a Herero.

(NB: this is a very simplified version of events, those seeking a more detailed account can find out more on Wikipedia. I would also recommend the book The Kaiser’s Holocaust, published by Faber.)

A couple other details that might interest:

1.      Several unexpected threads can be drawn between events in DSWA and the Third Reich. For example, the colonial governor in the years leading up to the Herero uprising was Heinrich Göring, father of the notorious Nazi. While one commanders of German forces was Franz Ritter Von Epp who went on to found the KPA, the administrative body that would have ruled Africa had the Nazis conquered the continent

2.      I taught myself a smattering of Herero while writing the book so all the lines Neliah and Zuri speak in their native tongue are correct (I hope!). However, my study-source was a book published in the 1890s which meant some words – helicopter, for example – didn’t exist. In these cases I had to neologise, creating new words from combinations of existing ones

Curiously, some of the first readers of Afrika Reich thought the Herero massacres were a fabrication; one publisher cited this as a reason for rejecting the book (i.e. he felt it was a strand of alternative history ‘too far’). I think this demonstrates how poorly known this genocide is while also proving the dictum, ‘Those who are ignorant of the past are doomed to repeat’. Many historians believe what happened to the Herero was a precursor to the Holocaust, indeed the BBC even made a documentary called From the Herero to Hitler, which rather neatly leads me to...

H is also for HITLER

One of the first decisions I made with the book was that HITLER would not directly appear in it. The same went for other well known Nazis.

Some readers have told me they would have liked a cameo, or even a more substantial role, but personally I felt it a bit crass. It also misses the point of what I’m trying to do. (I had a similar reaction to those who suggested I include people such as Nelson Mandela or Ben Gurion.) I think alternative history works best if these real figures are like shadows: their darkness falls across events without their physical presence.

Having said all that, I do have a scene in mind (the prologue of Book 3) where an on stage appearance from Hitler might be necessary. We’ll see...

Z is for ZIEGE

I mentioned in the last blog entry how I would make up details and later, during my research, discover I’d alighted upon fact. The Ziege is a case in point.

I assumed the Nazis would need some kind of jeep to allow them to negotiate Africa’s terrain – especially in places like Congo where muddy roads and the rainy season would make travel difficult, so it wasn’t too big a leap of imagination to assume they’d have some kind of four-wheel drive. So I put this imagined vehicle into the book in one of the earliest scenes where Burton escapes from the Schädelplatz. Months later, when I read the Wehrmacht’s 1940 plans for the occupation of Central Africa, I came across a reference about developing a ‘multi-terrain automobile’.

Zieges were partly inspired by the Kübelwagen (pictured), a military car designed by Porsche, built by Volkswagen and in which Hitler took a personal interest. Crucially, although over 50 000 ‘Kübels’ were built during the war they were not four-wheel drive (even those deployed in the Sahara for the North Africa campaign). That would have been the innovation that saw the Ziege become the Nazis’ vehicle of choice in the equatorial regions. ‘Ziege’ itself means ‘goat’ an animal well known for its ability to navigate tricky terrain.

One purely speculative idea I had was that this vehicle would eventually be adopted by the civilian car market as happened in America with the Jeep. So I had an image of the avenues of Germania thronging with Volkswagens and BMWs and cutting through them the hulking shapes of Zieges. A Chelsea-tractor or Hummer for the Nazi age – with all the corresponding grumbles. Alternative history or not, some things never change!

R is for RESEARCH

The very first RESEARCH question I had to ask was: did the Nazis ever have any plans for Africa? If I’d drawn a complete blank here it’s unlikely I would have continued with the book. As it happens (and as you’ll know from reading the book) they did. Lots. My initial investigations mostly provided details about the Nazis’ schemes for Madagascar – perhaps the best known aspect of their ambitions for Africa. This is the setting and subject for Book 2. Looking beyond the Indian Ocean, however, I also discovered plenty of information for the continent itself.

Although I continued to do research throughout the writing of the book, the main work was done in two blocks: before I began to write, and after I’d finished the fourth draft. The initial research was to get the overall structure of the Nazis’ plans – the big picture, if you will. The second phase involved a lot more detailed research to tease out specifics, everything from Himmler’s recommendation for breakfast in Africa to the thickness of the tarmac on the autobahn.

The actual process of research was akin to mining: going through deeper and deeper layers to find riches. I began with general texts about the period and then using the page notes and bibliographies was able to source more specialised works of history which in turn revealed ever more obscure books eventually leading back to specific archive documents. For instance, Michael Burleigh’s The Third Reich has only five references to Africa in over 800 pages – but each of those was listed in the endnotes offering an array of secondary, often more academic works and so on. I tracked down the latter in various libraries and universities around the world. The British Library was a particularly helpful source of information as was a compendious report on Congo written by British Naval Intelligence – I got hold of a declassified copy.

People often ask me how many books I read to research The Afrika Reich. To be honest I lost count – but it must have been in excess of 50-60. Here's a photo of just some of the volumes I ploughed through. (NB – you might not be able to read the spine of the top book. It’s a 1940s guide to military demolition which I got for Dolan’s character!)

Perhaps the most curious thing about the research – doubtless a consequence of spending so much time immured in Nazi Africa – was that I’d invent certain details only to find later that they were true. The best example of this is how the Nazis planned to redraw the map of Africa. In various texts I read about a map that Kriegsmarine (the navy) and the Foreign Ministry in Berlin had drawn up for Africa, yet despite spending years trying to locate a copy I never could; so in the end the map you see at the beginning of the book was speculative. Then, in the summer of 2009, after I’d finished writing and the book was being to submitted to publishers I finally got hold of the map. To my amazement it was almost exactly how I had envisioned it. All that was needed to get it 100% accurate was the inclusion of a few details, such as naval bases in Dakar and Conakry, and a little bit of tweaking along certain borders.

How is this possible? I once heard an interview with Sarah Waters and she said something similar about her research. The explanation she offered is that when you start doing a lot of it you end up with the mindset of the period/people you’re writing about – and the details flow from that. Without wanting to suggest I think like a Nazi, I couldn’t agree more.

R is also for REVENGE

If the book has a central theme it’s REVENGE. Indeed this is a theme that is explored over the narrative of all three books. Although I never intended too obvious a parallel, I certainly see The Afrika Reich as a post-9/11 book. In the weeks after the World Trade Centre was attacked there was definitely a mood for revenge in America, a mood that led to the mountains of Afghanistan and deserts of Iraq. Burton’s journey can be seen as a critique of that.

On a lighter note, if – as the old Klingon proverb goes – revenge is a dish best served cold then it’s worth noting that Burton swears he never kills in cold blood; indeed when he comes to avenge himself he does so in the oppressive heat of Kongo.

Happy New Year to everybody!