(Re-)writing the Holocaust after Brexit: the afterlives of British fiction

This article examines the representation of a Nazi-occupied Britain in post-2016 reworkings of earlier alternative histories in which Britain lost the war. It does so by placing the 2017 television series SS-GB and C. J. Carey’s 2021 novel Widowland in conversation with their original counterparts: Len Deighton’s 1978 novel of the same name and Robert Harris’ Fatherland of 1992, respectively. Each text therefore has to imagine the consequences of Nazi victory for the Jews of Britain. Appearing in a post-Brexit context in which questions of national sovereignty and identity have been contentiously brought to the fore, these adaptations reveal a tendency towards British heroism in the face of European domination, and reinforce the isolationist messages that had been central to the referendum’s ‘Leave’ campaign. In each case, the British setting reveals the potential for political danger to be found close to home. The encroachment of what had been considered the European malaise of antisemitic murder into the British present is articulated through the act of revision and adaptation. This article shows how the themes of the original works were employed post-2016, and asks why the wartime murder of the Jews is ultimately not their central concern.