Safe Return Doubtful

British Literature – Published 1952

British diplomat John William Wall wrote under the name of Sarban, though published only three books during his lifetime. Thirteen years after his death other manuscripts were found, two novellas and a collection of essays. They were published by Tartarus.

Kingsley Amis writes a lengthy introduction which explains why he prefers to term the novel as fantasy, rather than as science fiction or horror, due to its rural setting and elements of ‘sexual fantasy’ which, he writes, give the novel its pace and appeal.

It’s also an ‘alternative history’ tale, a ‘what-if’.. the Nazis had won the war. A group gathers at the county house of Alan Quesilion in England sometime in the late 1940s. A friend of his narrates, beginning the novel with the wonderful line..

It’s the terror that is unspeakable..

Alan tells of his escape from a POW camp, by tunnelling under the fence and travelling on foot through harsh terrain for a day and night, he becomes lost, and awakens in a hospital bed. He has passed through a Bohlen field, and advanced a hundred years in time. Meanwhile, Hitler established the Reich, and he is on the estate of the Reich Master Forester. His doctor shows him around the grounds, and Alan becomes aware of his terrifying surroundings; mute servants all identical, hunting equipment, slaves, cat girls in sadomasochistic garb turned into savage killers by the hulking Count Hans von Hackelnberg, who arrives heralded by his horn.

On recovery, Alan soon learns why he has been looked after, to be a future victim of the hunt, and is released naked except for clothing mimicking an animal, into the forest.

Wall avoids any detailed explanation of a future Nazi-dominated world, neither is it a tale of heroic resistance, instead he creates a nightmare-like vision of the realisation of Nazi ideology.

It’s powerful and disturbing with few, if any, lighter moments.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5