A forgotten 1934 novel that feels frighteningly relevant today and that I almost couldn’t believe was actually written in 1934 by an Englishwoman. Sally Carson died young in 1941, never seeing just how true her work turned out to be.
She wrote it during a holiday to Bavaria and it was a popular novel at its publication, dramatised a few times in the 1930s. However, it lay forgotten and overshadowed by other narratives, out of print until Persephone reissued it in April of this year.
Set in the fictional mountain town of Kranach near Munich between December 1932 and August 1933, the novel follows the Kluger family as Germany begins to slide into dictatorship. Lexa is in love with Moritz, a kind, thoughtful man whose Jewish heritage suddenly marks him for suspicion and exclusion. Her brothers, Helmy, charming but lost, and Erich, quiet and disillusioned, are slowly drawn into National Socialism, seduced by its false promises of prosperity and purpose for the long unemployed and disillusioned youngsters.
There’s also a powerful story about generational differences as the father, a veteran and Hitler skeptic, is slowly drawn into his sons’ excitement.
Through the eyes of this ordinary family, Carson captures the chilling normalisation of fascist ideology. Street violence, book burnings, ostracism, changing legal codes, surveillance…it gets increasingly hideous.
Carson wrote this just months after Hitler came to power, before the world truly knew what was coming. That’s what makes it so powerful. It’s not historical fiction written with hindsight, but a contemporary cry of alarm. It’s devastating.
It’s part of a trilogy – I think the next one is out at some point in the near future…
One word: ominous.
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