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Swastika Night

by Katharine Burdekin, Daphne Patai (Introduction)

3.7 of 5 stars 3.70 · rating details · 165 ratings · 30 reviews

Published in 1937, twelve years before Orwell's 1984, this novel projects a totally male-controlled fascist world that has eliminated women as we know them. They are breeders, kept as cattle, while men in this post-Hitlerian world are embittered automatons, fearful of all feelings, having abolished all history, education, creativity, books, and art. Not even the memory of...more

Paperback, 196 pages

Published 1985 by The Feminist Press at CUNY (first published 1937)

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Sep 25, 2011 Jake M. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Swastika Night is a dialogue driven and philosophically laden tale of an a pilgrimage of an Englishman named Alfred to Germany, the center of the Holy Nazi Empire. This fusion of alternate history and dystopian fiction is set six hundred years after the German victory over the Allies where Hitler is worshiped as an Aryan god. During his pilgrimage, Alfred encounters a Nazi knight who has doubts about the effects of holding women to an animal-like status. This book should not be typecast as a fem...more

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Aug 13, 2012 Dan Keating rated it 4 of 5 stars

Along with Brave New World and We, Katharine Burdekin's Swastika Night is often hailed a precursor to Orwell's earth-shattering work of dystopian fiction, 1984. While 1984 is probably a better story (for story's sake, with deeper, more well-rounded characters), it has one weakness; it is largely a justification of the idea that a society so twisted when compared with our own might survive. Burdekin's Swastika Night is not so much about the survival of a sick society (as arguments can be made tha...more Along with Brave New World and We, Katharine Burdekin's Swastika Night is often hailed a precursor to Orwell's earth-shattering work of dystopian fiction, 1984. While 1984 is probably a better story (for story's sake, with deeper, more well-rounded characters), it has one weakness; it is largely a justification of the idea that a society so twisted when compared with our own might survive. Burdekin's Swastika Night is not so much about the survival of a sick society (as arguments can be made that all societies are sick and to feel the need to justify the survival of one over the other reveals the author's inability to unroot himself from the society in which he lives for the purpose of writing the book) as about the death of a sick society, and not due to heroism or any other external force but due to the weight of its own internal lunacy. We'd do well to have so probing an exploration of the lunacy of our own society.

But then, Swastika Night is, in its own way, a probing look into our own society as well. Its criticism of the treatment of women goes beyond the beyond-deplorable condition women find themselves in during Burdekin's narrative (which takes place seven hundred years into a world where the Nazis control half the globe and women have been relegated literally to the status of animals, kept shaved and degraded in breeding pens with no right to anything, especially no right to refuse any man copulation should he demand it of her) to theorize that women themselves were subverted long before these conditions were enacted, subverted by male dominated society which always determined the shape and character women should espouse.

In a particularly excellent section, an Englishmen, who has rejected the Nazi notion that due to his not being German he is inherently inferior to all Germans (a lie which is observably untrue throughout the novel), has come to the conclusion that for a person to truly be himself he must consider himself superior to those around him. The greater social issue facing their society - that women are no longer producing female children - he theorizes is due to a breaking of the female spirit, and that only if women learn to love themselves and consider themselves superior can a society with sustainability be achieved. So, in essence, he has rationalized feminine superiority which, given the backdrop in which he does so, makes the idea all the more incredible.

Readers should be warned, Swastika Night lacks two things: subtlety and strong narrative. The majority of the book is conducted through one-on-one conversations between characters, relating ideas and histories. There isn't much that happens in an active sense. On the note of subtlety, pretty much every page is dripping with the Nazi indoctrination of Burdekin's future society, to the point where at times it is almost difficult to remember that one is reading a satire. While the constant Hitler-worship and blunt rejection by the majority of characters of the idea that women may be in any way human lacks any kind of subtlety at all, there is a certain subtlety to watching the characters who reject this society's conscious precepts attempt to overcome the unconscious prejudices which it has instilled (one character even remarks on the difference between cultural conscious versus cultural subconscious directly, a truly progressive thing to discuss in 1937).

Anyone who is interested in dystopian fiction should have a look at Swastika Night. Although it is touted a precursor to Orwell's 1984 (as I even brought up above), to call it such and leave it there is a real crime. The irony of a woman's gender-based exploration of dystopianism being considered a precursor but a work of less esteem than a man's relatively gender-neutral exploration of the same would probably not have been lost on Burdekin, who published the novel under an assumed name to prevent people from knowing it was written by a woman in the first place. All that aside, to the serious dystopian-interested intellectual, Swastika Night more than stands on its own and is an indispensable experience.

Dystopia fans aside, I would also recommend Swastika Night to anyone interested in gender studies. I'd urge caution to anyone expecting a more action-oriented experience; a bad, if not inaccurate, description of the book may detail it as a narrative of the passing of the means of dissent from one generation to the next in a Nazi-dominated future history, which sounds more like action-sci-fi than the novel really is. I still wouldn't warn people away from the novel, as it is full of fodder for consideration, but I would urge people to be aware of what they're getting into when picking it up.

(less)

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Mar 09, 2012 Jennie Walter rated it 2 of 5 stars

I thought that it was an interesting experience to read this book because it does show one possibility of what could have happened had Hitler remained in power and won the war. This was incredibly intriguing to me because I am really interested in the Holocaust. The book also displayed a lot of feminism throughout it especially with the ideas of women being completely oppressed and having no rights or idividualism at all. I liked this because for me it gave more emotion to the book because I am...more

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Dec 23, 2011 Avi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Sad and horrifying dystopian fiction set in an alternate history where the Axis won WWII. It also deals with religious issues somewhat indirectly, but it's fascinating (and sometimes funny) watching how history becomes mythologized and even myth becomes further mythologized. I picked it up and didn't put it down until I was done. Here is a passage from a church service at the beginning of the book. Perhaps it will inspire you to pick it up.

As a woman is above a worm,
So is a man above a woman.
As...more

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May 07, 2013 Eric rated it 3 of 5 stars

Swastika Night is a strange little novel, a dystopia written in 1937 which takes place in the seventh century of Hitler's Thousand-Year Reich. Written by a woman using the pseudonym "Murray Constantine" (the book was believed to have been written by a man until well after the author's death), it explores the deep anti-feminist sentiment behind National Socialism and its violent cult of masculinity, militarism, and racial purity. Of course, this aspect of the book is red meat to feminist critics,...more Swastika Night is a strange little novel, a dystopia written in 1937 which takes place in the seventh century of Hitler's Thousand-Year Reich. Written by a woman using the pseudonym "Murray Constantine" (the book was believed to have been written by a man until well after the author's death), it explores the deep anti-feminist sentiment behind National Socialism and its violent cult of masculinity, militarism, and racial purity. Of course, this aspect of the book is red meat to feminist critics, but there's a good deal more here besides.

Although this isn't much of a novel in strictly novelistic terms--it consists primarily of brief and perfunctory scenes connecting long, didactic soliloquies and dialogues about the secret history of the Reich and the all-but-obliterated history of the world prior to the Reich, strongly reminiscent of the dialogue between O'Brien and Winston Smith in 1984--the ideas behind it are strong and it is more readable than I expected. The story, such as it is, goes as follows: An eccentric elderly Knight (Nazi nobility) befriends a clever English airplane technician who has lost his faith in the state religion of Hitlerism. The Knight reveals to the Englishman that a long-ago ancestor of his wrote a forbidden book detailing the now-erased history of Nazi Germany and, in broad strokes, the world before. There are many surprises: women were once beautiful and intelligent; Hitler was not a giant, blond, Teutonic warrior-god; the species, and thus the Reich, are dying out because of a mysterious and precipitous deficit in female births; the eternal war between the German and Japanese Empires can never be resolved due to falling warrior populations on both sides; and so on. Since the Knight has no surviving heirs, he charges the Englishman with keeping the secret history and preserving it by taking it to England and passing it along to his son, which he does. The end.

Aside from the sad spectacle of the harshly oppressed, ignorant, and bovine womenfolk and the tale of how that state of affairs came to pass, there are strong parallels to the rise and fall of the Roman and British Empires and to the history of Christianity (though Jews have been exterminated in this future, the few remaining Christians have taken their place as untouchables). But perhaps the most shocking thing about the book is that it was published in 1937, before Kristallnacht, the Anschluss, the War, and the Final Solution, yet it predicts the likely course of Naziism with such eerie accuracy. All in all, don't expect too much here: the plot is thin and the book lacks the compelling qualities of Orwell or Huxley, but it's a quick read and a frightening look at a future barely averted.(less)

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Jun 02, 2012 Paulo Carvalho rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: dystopia, alternative-history

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. his was an interesting reading. A bit different of other books I've read about a hypotetical Nazi victory. Usually the tales are a couple years to decades into the future but this tale takes us to almost 700 hundreads years into the One Thousand Year Kingdom that Hittler envisioned.

This book was written over 70 years ago. Let's not forget that at that time woman in some countries were gaining a bit of respect but most of the world womens were seem beneath man. This book was written by a woman an...more his was an interesting reading. A bit different of other books I've read about a hypotetical Nazi victory. Usually the tales are a couple years to decades into the future but this tale takes us to almost 700 hundreads years into the One Thousand Year Kingdom that Hittler envisioned.

This book was written over 70 years ago. Let's not forget that at that time woman in some countries were gaining a bit of respect but most of the world womens were seem beneath man. This book was written by a woman and depicts a world divided by Japanese and the Nazi Empire. Both treat woman alike. Like cattle. There is one law that said "As a woman is above a worm; so is a man above a woman. As a woman is above a worm so is a worm above a christian." This says a lot no? This story has no major character as a woman but the story concentrates heavily onthe oppression of women and portraying the Nazis as homosexual misogynists. Christians are marginalized (like the europeans did to the Roma people some hundreds years ago) and of course the Jews were eliminated (at the time of the writing of the book there was no plot afoot about the killings of the jews).

This book is a propaganda book. There is no doubt about it. Nazis = Evil and homosexual (in these case the woman who wrote seem to have something against homosexuals). Woman = Poor woman. Christians = Poorer christians and of course Comunism = Good! And that's about it. He even says why fascism and democracy are poor choices of goverment. BAH!

These tale focus on a Knight (German noble) and a englishman as he tells him some secrets about the Nazi Empire.Adolf Hitler is a tall, blond god who personally won "The Twenty Years War". Alfred (the englishman) is astounded when shown a secret, historic photograph depicting Hitler and a girl before a crowd. First, he is shocked that Hitler is a small man with dark hair and a paunch. The crowd seem more interested in the girl; this does not fit the world view of Hitler as god. The photograph's most shocking betrayal of myth is the girl's appearance. Alfred believed her to be a boy — the attractive figure has a proud posture and long, blond hair — and is appreciated by the crowd. Women have developed self-loathing, becoming pathetic beings who have difficulty performing their sole, utilitarian function: reproduction.

Most of the book is the Knights tales about history, woman and christian values are not that bad (and indeed they aren't) but as I said before the book seems a lot about a propaganda book. After the tale that lasts for almost 120 pages the englishman is entrusted with a book depicting the Truth but Alfred is killed by a nazi but before he passes the book to his son telling him that the world is not ready yet.

Believe me when I say it's a nice tale and one to read it for anyone who loves alternative history or philosophy/politics.

Everyone is free to write whatever they want, right? We only read it if we want.(less)

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Jan 29, 2011 James MacIntyre rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

Although not the most technically fantastic read, the scope and accuracy of Burdekin's predictions are worthy of credit alone.

Written several years before the start of the second world war, it Predicsts a Nazi state in which; the decline of women's right occurs, Jewish people have been exterminated and history is rewritten by the victorious.

Obvious parallels can be made to 1984, but Orwell's superior prose and more developed narrative and characters put it streets ahead.

Still, an enjoyable read.

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Jun 01, 2010 Patrick rated it 2 of 5 stars

Swastika Night envisions a world thousands of years in the future in which the Nazis have joint world dominance with the Japanese and the past before Hitler has been obliterated from collective memory. It is a static world in which Hitler is worshiped as a blond, blue-eyed Viking-god that was not born of woman but exploded, where Knights rule small feudal societies, where the cult of manliness dominates to such an extent that boys are taken as lovers and women are hairless cattle kept in cages,...more Swastika Night envisions a world thousands of years in the future in which the Nazis have joint world dominance with the Japanese and the past before Hitler has been obliterated from collective memory. It is a static world in which Hitler is worshiped as a blond, blue-eyed Viking-god that was not born of woman but exploded, where Knights rule small feudal societies, where the cult of manliness dominates to such an extent that boys are taken as lovers and women are hairless cattle kept in cages, to be distastefully raped when male heirs are necessary. Christians are the new Jews, and they roam the countryside like hippies, shunned by society but more or less left alone.

There are things to like about this book, such as the author's ability to imagine a reality where social indoctrination is so extreme it is difficult for even the most likable characters to imagine women ever being beautiful, or having a soul or free will of their own, or that another form of life could have existed before Hitler's descendants changed the history book to a vague and worthless bible. And the writer is fine at expressing how every seemingly likable character- the freethinking Englishman Alfred, the sympathetic Knight who knows the most of the past because of a hereditary curse of knowledge, the Christians with their incomplete hand-me-down version of Jesus- is flawed because they can only see "Reality" through their own very strict slant of reality, which has been doubly thwarted by thousands of years of lies and cultural programming. Also, the author wisely sees reprogramming, not violence, as the only way of ever affecting any sort of inner change. This must have been a very unpopular message indeed, considering this book came out before WW II even began.

Nonetheless, the book was too boring, the writing too sloppy, the strawmen too strawy, the expositions too exposing, the Socratic dialogues too dull, the plot too slow. And it suffers from all the shortcomings of dystopian fiction that I despise: uninteresting flat characters, a God Narrator entering too many heads, unrealistic moments of awakening. Dystopian novels are often better essays than novels, and I wish they would present themselves as such instead of trying to come across as persuading and entertaining narratives, which they all hopelessly never turn out to be.

I do like one of the messages of the book (or at least find it interesting) which is to see your kind and you yourself as superior to
others, that the only crime is to not value oneself. "Women's submission is not due to their nature, but rather to the fact that women have never had two things that are available to men. One is sexual invulnerability; the other is pride in their sex." (viii) Writing back then was, in many ways, ahead of our time.(less)

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Mar 13, 2012 Shel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: feministsfcanon, dystopias

An intensely sad portrayal of a society whose norms have made it "...impossible for a man to love his own daughter."

A dystopia that envisions a world in which: Hitler has been deified; women are kept as farm animals; and a hierarchical authoritarian society upholds values of bloodshed, brutality, and ruthlessness.

It's notable as a feminist work without female protagonists and with few female characters. True to her setting, Burdekin relegates women to the background of her story and instead focu...more

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Nov 15, 2009 Brad rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: mieville50, speculative, counter-factual, dystopian, feminist-lit

Katherine Budekin wrote her frightening vision of a Nazi future in 1937, at the height of Hitler's power in Germany, as a scathing attack on the powerful patriarchies engaged in fascism.

Her argument , however, goes far beyond the confines of Nazism and her imaginary Nazi future. She is concerned with the history of all of Western Civilization: a history driven by gender politics, wherein women's voices have been erased from the collective memory almost as completely as her Nazis wiped out the h...more

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Mar 28, 2009 Huw added it

Shelves: sf

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jul 27, 2011 Kim Johnson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: dystopia

This book would serve better as an essay or a description of a would-be dystopia as opposed to an actual novel seeing as how there was no real arc of a story nor any depth of character. I found myself not really caring what happened to the characters and the book really dragged since it mainly consisted of conversations between characters. However, the actual dystopian scene in the book I really liked and I liked the fact that even the most perceptive and forward-thinking characters didn't even...more

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May 31, 2009 Darla rated it 3 of 5 stars

Now this is getting down to my kind man hating sci fi. I enjoyed this, not as involved as I like and certainly NOT the best I've read, but good stuff.

Recommended reading from: http://www.feministsf.org/bibs/recomm....

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Dec 07, 2011 Lynda rated it 3 of 5 stars

Interesting that this predicted a Nazi future where women were kept as breeders. This is what Hitler did in his breeder program.

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Feb 07, 2011 Marts (Thinker) marked it as sounds-interesting

Shelves: sci-fi, dystopia-or-utopia

...these dystopian novels are always interesting, they have you wondering what if some similar situation really does occur, and if so how the hell could you survive...

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Aug 04, 2011 Christian rated it 5 of 5 stars

Quality, not so well known, dystopia. Belongs right up there with books like 1984, Brave New World, etc.

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Nov 13, 2009 Meredith marked it as to-read

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/books...

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Feb 03, 2008 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars

Actually read this in the original hardback edition that I got from ABE. Burdekin isn't a wonderful writer, but she is a prophetic one. The books read as political tracts, full of ideas and, ultimately, rhetoric, but tending not to hang together as novels. Having said that, this is an astonishing work of speculative, socialist and feminist fiction - fascinating in the way it analyses the Nazi threat and its implications for humanity. Surely this has to be the first "What if Hitler had lived" nov...more

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Nov 12, 2012 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: university-reading, dystopia

I did like this. Dystopian fiction is something I'm becoming more and more familiar with, and it's interesting to think 'what if?' had history gone a different way. My raging Feminist came out when I was reading this, as women are seen as the 'worms' of society and they are treated in such a way that you simply wouldn't treat a dog, never mind a human.
But this was really interesting, and I'm glad I had the chance to read it for uni.

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Jul 27, 2011 Jenny rated it 5 of 5 stars

Amazing book.

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Sep 04, 2007 Dana rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Jarrett

Shelves: read-it-loved-it

This book is a dystopia set in a future based on an alternate outcome of World War II. Male homosexuality is the standard and women have no value. This book is so fascinating, especially when read immediately before or after Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The comparison/contrast between the 2 visions of highly gendered society is just amazing.

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Aug 20, 2007 Jonathan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm not sure how I heard about this book, I do remember that I had a hard time tracking it down. It was written a few years before Orwell's 1984, but has been overshadowed by it. It's a dystopic novel set some 400 years after the Nazis have won, and this was written in the 30's before they showed the full scope of their naziness(?). Anyway, read it.

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Jul 26, 2008 Emma rated it 3 of 5 stars

I had never heard of this book until my brother gave it to me for my birthday this year, and I'm very glad that he did.

The book is a fascinating exploration of manhood and masculinity, and what the logical conclusion of our attitudes towards women might be.

The book was written in 1937, but is really relevent to the modern day.

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Jul 22, 2007 James added it

Shelves: fiction

I read this book when I was much too young to understand it. I'm not sure what it was doing in my middle school (or maybe it was elementary school) library but I found it and wrote a report on it. I have to wonder if it had some kind of affect on my politics later in life.

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Jan 23, 2008 Marsha Altman rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the best alternate history of WWII (in which the Germans and the Japanese win) that I have ever read. It takes place as a novel set 700 years in the future, where Hitler is worshiped as a god and the descendants of the Nazi party are knights.

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Dec 17, 2008 Icky A. rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: radical-sci-fi

Clausterphobic, dark, dystopian story of fascism. Written before 1984 (I'm not sure why that matters, I think of this and "We" as being special because of that). Originally published under a male pseudonym. Re-issued by the Feminist Press.

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Jul 01, 2012 Nathan rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was a very good read, and the parallels it draws between this society and our own are very interesting.

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Mar 30, 2007 Cris rated it 4 of 5 stars

Not exactly a "fun" book to read, but it's an interesting read.

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Sep 27, 2009 Ruthie Jones rated it 5 of 5 stars

Frightening. The rampant mysogyny is quite disturbing.

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May 18, 2013 Laura Van marked it as to-read

Shelves: fiction

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About Katharine Burdekin

Katharine Burdekin was a British novelist who wrote speculative fiction dealing with political, social, and spiritual issues. She was the sister of Rowena Cade, creator of the Minack Theatre in Cornwall. Many of her novels could be categorized as feminist utopian/dystopian fiction. She also wrote under the name Kay Burdekin and under the pseudonym Murray Constantine. Daphne Patai unraveled "Murray...more

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