Germania - a virtual tour

Normally I only include one or two pictures with each blog entry. However, when I was researching Germania I came across so many striking images that I thought I’d share some of them here, starting with this artist’s impression of the approach to the Volkshalle or Great Hall:

This monstrosity was so huge that it would have been the biggest structure in the world if it had ever been built. Rising more than 1000 ft it had a capacity of 180 000 people. One of the unpredicted consequences of having so many people in a single space is that their breath would have risen into the dome, condensed, then fallen as rain, making it the only building even to generate its own climate. To get a sense of its sheer size here’s a model with the Brandenburg Gate in the foreground to show the scale:

The Great Hall stood at the end of the Avenue of Victory. The following two images show its position within the city:

Another of Germania’s landmarks would have been the Arch of Triumph. Once again, it was planned to be on a gargantuan scale and have a cubic capacity 49 times larger than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. One wonders why they didn’t go the whole hog and make it 50 times. Rather presumptively, Hitler had drawn a sketch of it as early as 1924. Here’s his original:

If you’d like a virtual tour of Germania, I recommend this video:

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...

N is for NELIAH

One of the biggest dilemmas I had during the planning of Afrika Reich was whether to include any black characters. I always wanted to but realised there were practical issues. With all the native races shipped to Muspel how would it be possible? And even if a black character had avoided transportation, how would they live? How could they survive in such a racist culture without instantly being spotted?

Given these impossibilities I reluctantly abandoned the idea and plotted the book using an entirely white cast even though I felt uncomfortable with what I was doing. I didn’t want to be accused of being patronising or, worse still, racist.

Gradually the idea of the Angolan resistance took form and, playing against type, I put two girls at the centre; two white girls (Luisa and Arabella, for the record). It was only when I was on the second or third draft of the plot that I realised L&A could be black, that although they engaged with the Nazis it was always in a hit-and-run fashion. So they could inhabit German Africa without the quandary of being the only dark faces in a continent of whites. Indeed, making them black added to how high the stakes were. Having some black characters also allowed me to depict the horrors of the Nazi regime from those who had suffered the most.

So were born Zuri and her younger sister, NELIAH.

I wanted Neliah to be a tough cookie but also a teenager, playing into that idea of the child-soldiers that have fought in so many of Africa’s recent conflicts. She’s also the noble heart of the book. Whereas the white characters are hellbent on murder (Hochburg, Uhrig) or happy to betray and abandon each other (the ‘good’ guys), Neliah is steadfast in wanting to protect her sister and defend her country. Unlike Burton and Patrick she’s fighting for a cause she believes in.

I’ve been asked about her name. As unbelievable as it seems the single word Neliah does actually translate from the Herero as ‘strong of will, vigorous of spirit, level of mind’: an example of how efficient African languages can be! Another thing readers ask me is about her rather open-ended last scene: so I’ll reveal now that not only does she survive the battle of Loanda but she returns in Book 3.

S is for SCHÄDELPLATZ

If there’s one image that everyone remembers from the book it must surely be Hochburg’s Schädelplatz. His square of skulls. Where did it come from?

Alas, I can’t remember. There was certainly no eureka moment when it entered my head fully formed. Nor was the idea gifted to me by a nightmare. Even looking back on early drafts of the plot doesn’t help as it was always there. This is one moment of inspiration that’s lost forever.

That said, it’s not without antecedent. There is Kurtz’s use of skulls to decorate his compound in Heart of Darkness (proof that ‘something is wanting in him’ as Conrad observes with typical understatement). Or the Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic: a chapel built from bones. And I’ve always been haunted by the killing fields of Cambodia where the skulls were piled higher than a man. Doubtless all these fed my imagination.

The Schädelplatz is Hochburg’s vision for Africa and skulls as a symbol is something that’s repeated throughout the book – an unintended fillip of the writing process. Beyond imagery, the Schädelplatz  also had another important function in the book, one that readers might have overlooked. I’ll come back to that in ‘F is for...’; meantime it leads me to...

S is also for SERGIO LEONE

Like all novels The Afrika Reich is an amalgamation of interests and influences. However, if I was asked to identify the most important, not only to the book but all my creative thinking, it would be the Italian film director Sergio Leone.

I could go on for pages explaining the whys and wherefores, but instead I’ll let him speak for himself. Hopefully the following quote will explain a lot. It may also go some way in illuminating the previous entry’s preoccupation with intent!

‘I love the authentic when it is filtered through imagination, myth, mystery and poetry. But it is essential the details seem right. Never invented. I think a fairy-tale captures the imagination when the story is a fairy-tale but the setting is realistic. This fusion of reality and fantasy [my italics] take us into myth, into legend.’

I is for INTENT

And so we come to the thorny issue of authorial INTENT. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of getting published has been how readers have interpreted my book in ways I never intended or even foresaw. I’ve lost count, for example, of the number of readers who are insistent that the film Die Hard is referenced throughout. For the record, although I’ve seen the film (to date still McTiernan’s best) and think it a clever, pulse-pounding thriller it was never an influence on Afrika Reich*. As a follow-on, many of the intended references – everything from TS Eliot to Luciano Vincenzoni to Norse mythology – have gone unremarked.

At university I came across reader response theory. I won’t bore you with a detailed explanation (you can find out more here) but in essence it says that the reader is the primary force who gives a book its meaning by interpreting it. As an undergraduate, and as you know already a fledging writer, I was deeply suspicious of this. How could the reader have more of a stake than the author? How could my book not mean what I meant it to?

It’s only since being published and having hundreds of people review and talk to me about my book (often in totally unexpected ways) that I’ve begun to appreciate there might be more to reader response than I initially believed. I now see how my intent has become just one of a myriad of interpretations of the text... though I still believe mine – as the creator – is the definitive one.

So what was my intent?

Now that’s an even thornier question! And one I’m not sure I should answer. This is not coyness on my behalf but after everything I’ve written above perhaps it’s not right to privilege my interpretation over others and so determine people’s view.

What I will say is that I wanted to write something relentless and visceral; something with an epic, journey-across-the-continent quality that would leave the reader exhausted. On a more surprising note, it wasn’t necessarily my intention to write an alternate history thriller... though clearly the book can be read that way.

 ---

*However, since so many people found ‘footprints’ where none were intended, as a private joke I’ve now referred to the film in Book 2!

Norway - a writer's paradise?

Last year I went to Madrid and Barcelona on a publicity tour to promote the Spanish edition of TAR. That was before this blog got going properly, so I didn’t write about it. Last week I was in Oslo for the release of the Norwegian edition and I thought I’d write a few words about the experience.

The two trips were very different in nature. In Spain I got blanket coverage in most of the national and regional press as well as radio and (cringe!) TV. In Norway I was doing a single in-depth and exclusive interview with VG, Norway’s biggest circulation paper. It’s always intriguing to know what questions you’ll be asked. In Spain much of the interest was to do with the politics of the book; in Norway, the alternative history aspect, violence and literary heritage of TAR were the main topics of conversation. I think it went well.

Me and the journalist Jon Rydne

After the interview, a photo shoot. Originally this was going to take place in the jungle house of the Botanical Gardens (I did something similar for my TV interview in Madrid) but when the Gardens learned the book was about Nazis (still a sensitive subject in Norway) they refused us permission. Luckily my publicist snapped into action and bought a load of plants to turn my publisher’s office tropical! Swastikas were also found as well as a bust of Hitler. You can see the photos on Facebook.

Afterwards, the sales manager took me round various bookshops in Oslo. There were piles of Afrika Reich everywhere. Particularly exciting was to walk past Norli, a flagship store, and find a stack of TARs in the window (check out the video below). Seeing my book like that is a bizarre experience. I find it funny to think that something I worked on for years, mostly in isolation, is now not only out in the world but in a place with snow on the ground, fjords barely half a mile away and city views totally unfamiliar to me.

Touring all the bookshops also made me think how different the Norwegian publishing business is to the UK. Their net book agreement has not been dismantled which means the industry is like ours was a couple of decades ago. There are over 600 books stores and half a dozen major chains – this in a country of 5 million. It’s rather damning that the UK with a population twelve times bigger can barely support Waterstones. Books are valued. Hardbacks retail at £30-40, there’s little discounting and no Amazon. Once a year the Norwegians have a nationwide book sale that gets people queuing round the block to pick up a bargain; about the only thing that generates this kind of interest at home is Next’s sale. What does that say?

There are also lots of publishers, more than a hundred. Some are very small but with such diversity there’s more opportunity for people to get published and more risky books get a chance. I’m not saying it’s perfect (the two biggest publishers, for instance, have vertically integrated businesses i.e. they not only publish but also own the distribution networks and bookstores) but to me Norway seemed liked a writer’s paradise!

A-Z resumes next week.

365 days on...

A year ago today THE AFRIKA REICH was published, which seems the perfect opportunity to take stock of the past 365 days.

I suppose the first thing to say is that the book was more successful than I ever imagined it would be. Prior to publication, my publisher wisely managed my expectations... but I’m glad to say I exceeded them. Although not on the Sunday Times Bestsellers List (yet!), sales have been pretty decent with the book going into a second printing in hardback and fast approaching its fifth impression in paperback. I’ve already earned back my advance. Not bad for a novel which the majority of publishers in this country said had no commercial appeal!

Equally gratifying was the critical attention the book received. Many non-writers won’t realise how difficult it is to get reviews. My publicist said one or two would be a good showing. To date TAR has been reviewed in eighteen publications from The Times in London to the Star in New Zealand. The Economist and Express named it as one of their Best Books of 2011. I was particularly proud of this as it vindicated the conviction I had in the book when it was being rejected by everyone.

After its UK publication the book began to sell abroad. So far TAR has been acquired by six countries (two of which I’m still waiting to sign contracts with before going public), including a significant two-book deal in the United States. With the foreign deals – and a rarity for an unknown debut author – came foreign publicity tours: a combination of media appearances, more hard work than you’d imagine and a sprinkling of glamour. Last year I went to Madrid and Barcelona; next week I’m off to Oslo.

I don’t want to give the impression it’s all been fun and fireworks, however. It’s a time of great change in the publishing world and as always with change comes uncertainty and apprehension. No one quite knows what’s going to happen over the next few years: how the transition to ebooks will affect the industry or the potential damage on-line piracy can wreak. Books shops are also taking a hammering with Waterstones the only dedicated chain left and its prospects still in the balance. I’ve been directly affected by these issues.

I also feel that amidst this fretting about the technology of publishing, one question is often overlooked. Will people even continue to read? In a couple of generations from now, will the novel be as arcane as poetry? Sometimes, when I’m on a train for example, and see everybody plugged into ipods or texting madly but rarely reading (be that kindles or old-fashioned books) I do worry about my chosen vocation.

TAR tops Nesbo in the charts!

But today is not the occasion to dwell on this. It’s a time to focus on the positive. I’m often asked what aspect of getting published I’ve enjoyed the most. I have to say it’s not really seeing TAR in a book store or reviewed in a paper. It’s those unexpected moments of connecting with a reader I’ve never met, and this is best expressed in fan mail. So far I’ve had letters and emails from places as far flung as Belgium, Cape Town, Chile, San Diego... even Mozambique! These have been more gratifying than anything else.

Which leads me on to the most important thing to say. Thanks to everyone who bought the book and has supported me these past 365 days. I really do appreciate it.

Now all that remains is to celebrate... and what better way than a bowl of mango and strawberry trifle!

J is for JAMES CAMERON

Before writing a single word of a novel I like to think about it. Think about it, ponder it, reflect on it. During that time I’m not only plotting and developing the characters I’m also working out how the minutiae of the story connect. In my opinion a novel is a mesh of connections. The more of these connections there are, no matter how subtle, the stronger the finished book will be. With Afrika Reich this process took the best part of a year.

However, several months into the process, despite having an incipient plot, something was missing.

E.L. Doctorow, the American author, once wrote, ‘You have to find the voice that allows you to write what you want to write... it’s a writer’s dirty little secret that language precedes the intentions.’ And that was my problem. I didn’t have a voice, that elusive something shoehorns the story into a context. To put it another way, what type of book was I trying to write? What was the tone? Something stately, detached and methodical, a tale lit by the grey light of dawn? A narrative related entirely from the German perspective: a type of self-critique? What about a black comedy? I toyed with all these possibilities and more.

In the end the lightbulb moment came from an unexpected source. I was watching the DVD extras to Aliens which included an interview with the film’s writer/director JAMES CAMERON (complete with the most ghastly jumper you ever saw). In it, he described his film as ‘a dark adventure story with a warm human heart’. That was it! Afrika Reich would rumble with the Nazis’ malevolent, savage vision for the continent but the story itself would be carried by the relationships of friends, both old and new. It seems so obvious now but back then this was a genuine moment of revelation.

In the end my book combined elements of this and moved a considerable way from it, but Cameron’s words were the initial inspiration behind the tone of the narrative. I say ‘in the end’ because this reflects another, often overlooked element of writing a novel. It takes such a long time to complete one that both the person you are and the book you start with are different by the end. Even the act of writing the book – a process of discovery itself – morphs things. So whatever your initial vision, the best you can hope for is an interpretation of it. With a trilogy this dilemma is cubed... but that’s for another time.

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!