Overview

This book explores the anti‑fascist novel in Britain: its origins in activists’ experience, its solutions to questions of how to organise. Some of the works Renton discusses are classics of twentieth‑century literature including Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia. Some are or were best‑sellers – including Len Deighton’s SS‑GB. The novels share certain themes: a central character is radicalised towards fascism and that decision shapes the protagonist’s life for the worse. Alternatively, in a mirror version of the same pattern, a protagonist becomes an anti‑fascist and seeks to improve the world around them. Renton explains the real‑life history that these novels reflect and the committed anti‑fascist politics with which they engage. This book will be of interest to researchers of antifascism and social, cultural, and political history.

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9781041269144

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Author Information

D. K. Renton is a British historian and barrister. His other books include Horatio Bottomley and the Far Right Before Fascism (Routledge, 2023), Labour’s Antisemitism Crisis: What the Left Got Wrong and How to Learn From It (Routledge, 2022), No Free Speech for Fascists: Exploring ‘No Platform’ in History, Law and Politics (Routledge, 2021) and Never Again: Rock Against Racism and the Anti‑Nazi League 1976–1982 (Routledge, 2019).

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