Torley
December 2, 2010, 11:08pm
1
Awhile ago, I read about a book that has striking similarities to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, only it came years earlier and was written by a woman. What I read alleged that the female author wasn’t taken seriously to have those ideas, and her book languished in obscurity since. It wasn’t clear to me if Orwell took deliberate influence (or even ripped-off) from her, or if it was coincidence, but does anyone know which book I’m referring to?
The topic came up in conversation when my daughter showed me Herland, and I was trying to recall. Thanks much.
Could be Swastika Night .
Swastika Night is a futuristic novel first published in 1937 and republished in 1940 by Katharine Burdekin, writing under the pseudonym Murray Constantine. Swastika Night was a Left Book Club selection in 1940.
The novel is based on Hitler’s claims that Nazism would create a “Thousand Year Reich”. Despite its similarity to an alternate history novel, the text, written prior to World War II, plays out in a way which is extreme though believable, considering the peculiar character of the Nazi State. At the time of writing, the book was not an alternate history but rather a plausible future history, which did not come true.
The novel bears striking similarities to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, published more than a decade later: the past has been destroyed and history is rewritten, language is distorted, few books exist apart from propaganda, and a secret book is the only witness to the past.
Under the author’s name, Wiki says:
Burdekin’s best-known novel, Swastika Night, was published in 1937 under the Murray Constantine pseudonym, and republished in 1985 in England and the U.S. Reflecting Burdekin’s analysis of the masculine element in fascist ideology, Swastika Night depicts a future in which the world has been divided between two militaristic powers: the Nazis and the Japanese. Set hundreds of years into the future, this dystopia envisions a sterile, dying Nazi Reich, in which Jews have long since been eradicated, Christians are marginalized, and Hitler is venerated as a God. A “cult of masculinity” prevails, and a “reduction of women” has occurred: deprived of all rights, women are kept in concentration camps, their sole value residing in their reproductive roles. The novel bears striking similarities to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, published more than a decade later: the past has been destroyed and history is rewritten, language is distorted, few books exist apart from propaganda, and a secret book is the only witness to the past. Swastika Night was a Left Book Club selection in 1940 – one of the few works of fiction thus honored. Burdekin anticipated the Holocaust and understood the dangers presented by a militarized Japan while most people in her society were still supporting a policy of appeasement. A pacifist committed to communist ideals, Burdekin abandoned pacifism in 1938 out of the conviction that fascism had to be fought.
Sounds more like a few general themes in common - all based on what was actually happening in the USSR in the 30s - without any possible direct influence, but I admit I’ve never read the book.
I’ve read that Ayn Rand – a Russian emigre – also wrote an early novel taking up the same theme, but I don’t know how similar it is to 1984.
Are you thinking of Anthem ?
Anthem is a dystopian fiction novella by Ayn Rand, first published in 1937 in England. It takes place at some unspecified future date when mankind has entered another dark age as a result of the evils of irrationality and collectivism and the weaknesses of socialistic thinking and economics. Technological advancement is now carefully planned (when it is allowed to occur at all) and the concept of individuality has been eliminated (for example, the word “I” has disappeared from the language). As is common in her work, Rand draws a clear distinction between the “socialist/communal” values of equality and brotherhood and the “productive/capitalist” values of achievement and individuality.
It’s not very similar at all.
Torley
December 3, 2010, 1:23pm
5
Exapno, Swastika Night was exactly the one I was thinking of. Thanks awesomely. Kind of funny that it was published a year after the title of Nineteen Eighty Four.