In Dust Jacket
Swastika Night by Murray Constantine.
London: Gollancz, 1937.
Price: $7,500.00
About the item
First edition. 1 vols. 8vo. In Dust Jacket. Blue cloth, original printed dust jacket. Stamped Archive Copy on title page. Fine copy in near fine dust jacket (spine panel slightly faded, 3 mm chip at head repaired at verso; small circled a in pencil on front panel of jacket, tiny 37 in red ink on top of back panel). Cloth clamshell box. Locke, Spectrum of Fantasy, p. 57; Wessells 26.
Item #352273
‘not begotten, not born of a woman, but Exploded’
Outstanding copy of the prescient, alarming novel of Nazism triumphant, written by Katharine Burdekin and published as by Murray Constantine. The pseudonym was not unlocked until the mid-1980s, long after Burdekin’s death, when Daphne Patai wrote the introduction for the Feminist Press reprint.
This feminist novel is remarkable for its extrapolation of the cult of Hitler, the grim portrait of the degradation of women, and its recognition of the homoeroticism latent in the Nazi idealization of male power. Swastika Night is also a prime example of science fiction as understanding the present: its author observed what Hitler advocated, and wrote this novel in 1936 (it was published in June 1937).
RARE in dust jacket.
