Robert Harris's first novel, Fatherland (1992), was a counterfactual historical thriller set in Nazi Germany in 1964. In the alternative reality of the book, Germany defeated the Soviet Union in the Caucasus in 1943, lured the Royal Navy to its destruction after learning that the British had cracked the Enigma code, and intimidated the United States into signing a peace treaty by successfully testing an atom bomb and launching an intercontinental V3 rocket across the Atlantic. Now Hitler's 75th birthday is approaching, and a historic summit is planned between the Führer and President Joseph Kennedy, as nearly twenty years of Cold War between the world's two superpowers look set to thaw.

LRB 15 November 2007 | PDF Download