Living the Anschluss

This extraordinary and inventive novel opens with a letter, written at Christmas 1954, from a middle-aged Australian woman resident in Vienna to her much younger half-brother, Roderick Raye, still a schoolboy in suburban Sydney. The writer, who styles herself as Phoebe Raye Krizman, has married an Austrian and has clearly come to identify herself with her husband’s nation, fully aware of the disastrous consequences of its dalliance with Nazism, yet scornful of its treatment by the Great Powers after the First World War, a repression that at least contributed to the bitter circumstances in which political extremism could thrive. Quaintly, she describes their family home in Stanmore as a “southern outpost” of Austria, a little “Liechstenstein”, a tiny state still loyal to the best values of Germanic culture. No one is ever surprised to encounter a Francophile or Italophile in one’s reading, but a Germanophile is sufficiently unusual in itself to merit the epithet “inventive”!

The narrative centres on the years 1956 and 1957. Roderick has begged her to answer his questions about the events surrounding the Anschluss twenty years previously, the “annexation” of Austria by Germany, or perhaps more correctly the incorporation of Austria into a greater German Reich.

The inventiveness of the book arises also from its unusual historical context. There are few works of fiction in English on the Anschluss. Any works dealing with this period tend to concentrate on the Jewish question, usually through some clichéd romantic predicament involving Jewish and non-Jewish characters, at least one of whom is committed to a cause (usually on the “right” side). Furthermore, most English speakers who are familiar with the Anschluss take a fairly superficial view of the event (if they bother to think about it at all), believing that the Austrians welcomed Hitler’s Germany with open arms, as represented in the newsreels of the period. There is virtually no appreciation of the Austrian predicament after the Great War, little understanding of the long-term machinations of Hitler regarding Austria, and no awareness of the swiftness of events in March 1938 and the reign of terror that ensued. Annette Young has addressed this by writing a novel, not a history. Her tools are character development rather than mere narrative; and, as befits the historical novel genre, the endeavour is not an end in itself, but is subordinated to higher themes, and offers a salient message to the present.

The bulk of the book is a richly textured and far-ranging story of life in times as challenging and terrifying as any times can be. Annette Young probes the depths as well as the heights of the Austrian people’s experience: Phoebe loves her adopted country yet detests the abuses of fascism; she grieves over the loathsome treatment meted out to the Jews, but does not lose sight of the essential goodness of the Austrian heart even when it is occluded by brutishness.

The reader is impressed by the depth and breadth of Young’s knowledge not only of Austria, but of the entire European (and Turkish) background to the Great War and its aftermath. History as a discipline is almost moribund in today’s educational milieu. Such history as is taught is often no better than propaganda, and divergence from the official “line” is (to put it mildly) discouraged. Young people need to toe the line to pass exams. Curiosity and inquiry are discouraged, especially if they cause “offence”. It is therefore such a relief to find a good book that comes to grips with the paradoxes of history, and does so sweetly: sugaring the pill may be the only way to reclaim the interest of the young. And if their minds are switched on they will see that there are no glib answers, that there is a cyclic tendency in human affairs, and that honest analysis of the past can bear fruit in the gaining of wisdom.

Callimachus of Cyrene is credited with the saying that “a big book is a big evil”. He was referring to the epic poetry of his age, but the novel has tended to shy away from his advice: Richardson and Sterne, Cervantes, Tolstoy and Flaubert, Scott and Dickens are not notable for their brevity (serialised books demanded a high degree of prolixity). Jane Austen and George Eliot tend towards the other polarity, crisp economy of language. It is I think a fair comment that By Violence Unavenged is longer than it need be. It needs further editing. Précis writing is among the most useful skills a novelist can acquire yet even the best writers sometimes find it hard to distinguish the essential from the otiose, the clarifying details that enrich narrative from gratuitous and distracting detail.

With that reservation, By Violence Avenged is a beautifully written novel. It is a pleasure to read Annette Young’s prose and to enjoy her wide learning. I have just one more quibble, for that is all it is: the reason for her choice of title, derived from Dante’s Inferno (canto 29), was not at first obvious, at least to me. The reason, on reflection, must be that as Dante had Virgil as his guide to the Underworld, so Phoebe also has hers: Eric, Kerem, Emil and Hubie all serve to help her to navigate the wider world.

For all that, could she not have found a more punchy title? In an age when book titles compete with each other in quirkiness and bold appeal, this novel may miss an opportunity to snatch attention. Can you tell a book by its cover? Perhaps not, but in a PR-driven world you might very well choose a book because its packaging stood out from the rest on the shelf. To miss this one would be a real shame, for it is a very fine book.

By Violence Unavenged: In the Heart of Kings, Volume I
by Annette Young
Distant Prospect Publishing, 2019, 472 pages, $34.95

Dr David Daintree AM is the Director of the Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies in Hobart.