Many
ideas are repeated in novel after novel, but the right approach
can achieve freshness. One
of these is the idea that the Nazis were victorious over
Europe
in World War II. Although
numerous authors have founds ways to give Hitler’s forces free reign
from the North Atlantic to the Urals, many of them wind up rehashing
ideas which have already been doen to death.
In Dominion, C. J.
Sansom achieves a new way of looking at the situation by presenting a
world in which
Great Britain
and
France
refuse to get involved in the war against
Germany
, instead becoming satellite states while
Germany
turns its full attention towards defeating the
Soviet Union
.
In
1952, as
Germany
is preparing to celebrate twenty years of Hitler’s leadership, David
Fitzgerald, a civil servant for the British Office of the Dominion,
finds himself recruited by his old college friend, Geoffrey Drax, to
help spy for the Resistance, led by an almost unseen Winston Churchill.
Although Fitzgerald dislikes hiding his activities from his wife,
he realizes he must in order to protect her.
At the same time, one of his old college friends, Frank Muncaster,
finds himself in an asylum after attacking his brother.
Without anyone to turn to, he contacts Fitzgerald for assistance
and the Resistance decides that Fitzgerald should attempt to remove
Muncaster from the country.
Sansom
incorporates many clichés of the field, including the couple torn apart
over the death of their son and the individual living under a
Nazi-influenced state who discovers he’s part Jewish to name two of
them, however, he manages to incorporate them into his dystopian saga
well, focusing on the individuals tried to live under an oppressive
regime. Their relationships
are at the core of the novel, with Sansom not only looking at
Fitzgerald’s attempts to make contact with Muncaster and his
relationship with his wife, but also at the very real character of
Gunther Hoth, the SS agent who has been assigned to keep an eye on
Muncaster and whose brutality is tempered by his understanding of the
individuals involved, which serves to make the character even more
chilling. Hoth is not an unmitigated monster, although any examination
of his character makes the cruelty he is capable of and his adherence to
the tenets of Nazism show the true horror that underlines his humanity.
Even
more chilling than the portrayal of Hoth and his sycophantic British
Sidekick, Symes, is the overall depiction of a Fascist Britain.
Parents and children keep secrets from each other, people are
careful about what they say and where they go, when witnessing
injustice, the inclination is to turn a blind eye, mostly because the
ramifications of standing up are demonstrably horrific. The bleak
society Sansom portrays is all too likely an occurrence, as can be seen
in so many recent and current societies.
The world of casual brutality Sansom has created
in Dominion is not one in
which anyone would want to find themselves living, his band of
Resistance fighters, are depicted as ordinary people who are doing what
little they can to fight tyranny and imagine a more free world.
These characters generally are ones which the reader does not
mind spending time with for the duration of the novel.
Despite the atrocities that happen throughout the novel,
Sansom’s work is not unremittingly pessimistic, allowing for the spark
of hope that the world can be made a better place.
