The Dark Knight Rises

As regular readers of this blog will know I tend not to write about ‘personal’ things, mostly because I prefer discussing Afrika Reich than myself. Today is an exception as earlier in the week I saw The Dark Knight Rises… and want to tell you about it.

The first thing you need to know is that I very rarely go to the cinema. I find the communality of it off putting: all that chomping popcorn and chatting when I’ve come to see a film. In fact I’m a total fascist on the subject of talking in the cinema; when I saw Batman Begins I almost got involved in a punch-up because the person in front of me wouldn’t shut up. Second, and only a small cabal of people know this so I’m revealing more than usual today, I’ve been a closet Batman fan all my life… so my trip to the BFI’s IMAX was quite an occasion.

And well worth it. The Dark Knight Rises is a spectacle on a scale rarely seen these days: epic in its sweep with electrifying set-pieces and a real sense of danger, characters I genuinely cared about and a score so bombastic it threatened to give me a heart attack. Writer / producer / director Christopher Nolan’s insistence on getting as much of the action ‘in camera’ (as opposed to using CGI) pays off handsomely – as absurd as the notion of man dressed as a bat is, the whole thing feels real, credible. It’s not a perfect film (one plot twist is decidedly naff) but I found the overall emotional effect of the film deeply satisfying.

The whole experience was further enhanced by the gargantuan IMAX screen and sound so impressively loud that my ears were still ringing next morning! If you enjoyed the first two parts of Nolan’s trilogy I wholeheartedly recommend you seek this out, especially at an IMAX.

For me, the greatest triumph of The Dark Knight Rises was how effortlessly it fused character, action, morality and politics within a realistic, fairy-tale setting… and here I hope you can see the connection with Afrika Reich and why I’m enthusing so much. Indeed the mythology of Batman, its theme of revenge and aesthetic (more of the latter in ‘F is for…’), was an influence on my book. It’s always surprised me, for instance, that no one has made the connection between Hochburg and Ra’s al Ghul.

I read that Christopher Nolan is going to take some time off now before finding his next project; he’s looking for a thriller more grounded in the real world, ‘something like James Bond’. If anybody has a contact at Syncopy, let me know!

G is for GERMANIA

GERMANIA – or to give the city its full title Welthaupstadt Germania (World Capital Germania) – was the name the Nazis planned to give Berlin if they won the war.

Along with Hitler not appearing in the book (see ‘H is also for…’) another early decision I had to make was whether any scenes would be set in the capital of the new German Empire. It is, of course, the primary location of Robert Harris’s Fatherland, indeed I’ve often wondered why he didn’t call his book Germania. In a rather sneaky exposition scene Harris has his hero and son take a bus tour of the city so the reader can become familiar with its sights: the Great Hall, Avenue of Victory, Arch of Triumph und so weiter.

Germania is brought to life so vividly in Fatherland that I didn’t see much point in revisiting it, so during the planning of Afrika Reich I chose not to use it as a setting. This also coincided with me exorcising anything in Britain/London, apart from the prologue. I liked the intensity of having the whole book set in Africa with no European ‘relief breaks’, something my agent initially pressed for. I’ll come back to this in ‘U is also for...’

Speer admiring a model of his planned city as seen in the film Downfall.

On a practical note, it’s unlikely Germania as envisioned by Hitler and his architect, Albert Speer, could ever have been built. The planned buildings were so monumental that they required granite hard foundations; Berlin is built on marshy ground. To test whether such huge edifices could ever be erected several exploratory load bearing blocks were constructed. If they sank less than 6cm, the ground of Berlin would not have been capable of sustaining the structures Hitler imagined. They were built in 1941 and although they exist to this day, within three years had slipped 18cm!

Nevertheless there’s great appeal in the prospect of such a histrionic city with its Olympian architecture and convictions of grandeur. I was particularly struck by one, slightly apocryphal detail. Visiting dignitaries would arrive at Templehof airport, then drive directly through the city along the Avenue of Splendours to Hitler’s Palace and finally his study: an uninterrupted straight line of five kilometres from your plane to the desk of the Führer. Can you imagine such megalomania? In the earliest drafts of Book 2 Hochburg made this journey.

Unfortunately as I began developing the plot this scene became more and more unnecessary until finally I realised it had to be cut. Working on a novel, however, is a process of constant evolution, so even as Hochburg’s scene fell from the manuscript another scene in Germania presented itself. Something more gentle and unexpected. You’ll have to wait for the sequel to find out what, but it may just involve Burton... and ice cream!

See the next entry for a virtual tour of Hitler’s planned city.

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.