V is for VANILLA & VIOLENCE

The A to Z of THE AFRIKA REICH ended on a note of VANILLA & VIOLENCE, so it’s time to revisit these subjects.

Madagascar is the world’s largest producer of vanilla, something the SS planned to profit from if they took control of the island. To be clear: this is more than my imagination; it’s in the real documents. So vanilla is a motif that runs through the book, indeed the Jewish uprising that haunts the backstory is called the ‘Mered Ha-Vanil’: the Vanilla Rebellion.

Originally there was much more about vanilla, including scenes set around its cultivation and processing. But as happened repeatedly while writing Madagaskar, I had to lose things to keep the word length manageable. It’s already a long novel at 160,000 words (40K longer than the original). As fascinating as vanilla production is, it wasn’t central to the plot, so was edited out. If you want to learn more about the subject I recommend one of my research books: Vanilla: A Cultural History by Patricia Rain.

When you read Madagaskar, you’ll discover it’s less violent than Afrika Reich. One of the important things I wanted to do with the new book was to take it in a different direction, this included giving it a different tone. Before the first book was even published, I decided I wanted the sequel to be less frenetic and less violent. There’s no complex rational behind this: it was an intuitive choice. As it happens it was also a fortuitous one, a synergy between my instinct, my publishers and readers. Many of the latter worried that Afrika Reich was too violent, and my publisher (and especially publicist) fretted about the commercial implications for the same reason. One major retailer refused to stock the book because of the violence... something I found strange given you could buy The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in the same shop, the rape scene in which is worse than anything in Afrika Reich.

However, before you worry that Burton has become a conscientious objector with a penchant for vegan quiche or that Hochburg is now a born-again pacifist, there’s still plenty of bang for your buck... it’s just less explicit and bloody (though interestingly, the body count is higher). In terms of cinema classification, I’d say it has dropped from an 18 to a 15; R to PG-13 for US readers.

V is also for V (i.e. 5)

Although I wanted a different tone, it was also important that there were continuities between the books. One of the more subtle examples is structural. Like the first book, Madagaskar has seven points of view: the story is told from the perspective of six characters and an alternative history narrator. Both books are also divided into four parts each starting with an epigraph; the style of epigraphs is identical, i.e. one proverb, one quote from Hitler, one general Nazi quote, one made-up quote from/about Hochburg. Originally I wanted the first part of the new book to be Part V to suggest the continuation of a wider trilogy, and as a nod to The Empire Strikes Back, aka Episode V. My editors on both sides of the Atlantic vetoed the idea, saying it would be confusing for new readers.

Nevertheless, I always liked the Episode V reference. Not only is Empire one of the best examples of a middle part of a trilogy, it’s also different in tone and plot to its predecessor (see above). And when I was struggling with the ending of Madagaskar I read something that Irvin Kershner, Empire’s director, mused upon. To paraphrase: he said that his film didn’t have a narrative climax because so many strands remained unresolved, so to give Empire a resolution he needed an emotional climax. They were wise words. And that’s exactly what I’ve done with my book.

Reflections & V is also for...

When I first began this A-Z of Afrika Reich I meant to publish an entry a week with the last, ‘V is for...’, going live as the UK paperback was published. As with the writing of Book 2, this schedule now seems rather optimistic. But as the A-Z draws to an end I thought it was a good opportunity to reflect on it.

In the two and a half years I’ve been writing this blog, more than 32 500 people have visited it; I hope some of them have read it and been intrigued and entertained by the contents. It has certainly been a revealing process for myself. I’ve learnt as much about the book dissecting it here as I did while writing, perhaps more. At the same time, trying to get a handle on it has been like sculpting steam: for every assertion I make, I’m immediately aware of several contradictions. I like to think, however, that I’ve shown that Afrika Reich is more than just Fatherland or SS-GB in the tropics.

The comparison with those books has been both a boon and a curse. The great advantage was that it created an association with existing bestsellers. Against that, I never saw Afrika Reich as being of the same ilk. A naturalism has crept into novels imagining a victorious Nazi Germany, something borne through SS-GB and Fatherland and continuing to this day with the recent Dominion. I wanted to move away from that, though the demands of marketing departments meant I often had to play to the gallery and define myself in terms of Deighton, Harris et al (not that they’re bad company to keep!).

Why the naturalism? It may partly reflect a general movement in fiction. I think it also comes from a sense that if an author captures certain details then he is accurately portraying what the world would have been like if Hitler had won. I remain unconvinced. The whole point of an alternative history is that we can never know what it would have been like. A more fantastical approach served earlier examples of the genre well, such as Swastika Night, The City on the Edge of Forever (for all the Star Trek fans I know who read this blog) and The Man in the High Castle. By tendency, I’m more comfortable in this camp.

This blog has allowed me to convey a sense of that and speak my mind more openly than the marketeers probably want me to. If you’ve read this far you’re in a better place to understand my intentions (yes, that word again); it’s something I plan to continue more explicitly in Book 2 – the subject of my next entry and the last in the series. While I leave you to speculate what the V can stand for, here’s the addendum in advance...

V is also for Violence

Along with the literal brigade (see ‘L is also for...’) the reaction that most surprised me about the book was how violent people found it. Obviously given its setting and subject it was never going to be a fluffy, rose-perfumed narrative, despite that I never felt the violence was as bad as some people protested. I’ve had grown men tell me they had to stop reading because they found it excessive. What this says about me I don’t know – though others have speculated (see here, for example).

All I can say is: 1) I didn’t want to shy away from the violence that was the reality of the Third Reich and continues to this day in central Africa; nevertheless I always perceived mine as a stylised, almost comic violence, not to be taken entirely seriously 2) before submitting the book for publication I made a conscious decision to tone things down. If you think the version that ended up in the shops is bad, you should see the earlier drafts!