Book review - Rogue Male

Geoffrey Household’s classic novel Rogue Male was published in 1939, which gives it immediacy for that time. The unnamed narrator, a British aristocrat, has just failed to assassinate the tyrannical leader of a European country – whether it’s Hitler (probable) or Stalin is not explained. He is captured by secret service men and tortured and questioned but tells them nothing. They believe he is working for the British government; he insists he is a private individual and was simply hunting near their leader’s House.

The first implausible plot-point then arrives. Instead of killing him as an inconvenience, they engineer an ‘accident’, throwing him off a cliff with his belongings. ‘British aristocrats meets with unfortunate demise while hunting’. But, naturally, our resourceful narrator survives the fall (or we wouldn’t be reading the story) and, though seriously injured, sneaks away before the local police can ‘find’ the ‘unlucky tourist’.

The survival and escape from pursuit are Household’s strengths in this tale. He describes the difficulties well, and we can empathise.

To begin with, we don’t know why he should have set out on this mission. As he says, ‘I am not an obvious anarchist or fanatic, and I don’t look as if I took any interest in politics.’ (p1) I have to wonder how does someone look who is interested in politics. The first clue to his motivation is here, however: ‘One can hardly count the upsetting of one’s trivial private life and plans by European disturbances as a grievance.’ (p9)

The ploy to use an unnamed narrator is to bolster the feeling that this is in effect a true story. ‘Lest what I write should ever, by accident or intention, become public property, I will not mention who I am. My name is widely known.’ (p8)

More than once, Household’s narrator appears to judge people by appearance, attributing base motives. While hiding in a field, he fears he may be detected. ‘There were several peasants on their way to the fields. I could only pray that they wouldn’t enter mine. They would have had some sport with me before handing me over to the police; they seemed that sort.’ (p22)

Where Household’s narrative falls down, and thus diminishes the ‘believability’, is in his description of the characters he encounters during his escape. They are virtual cyphers, without colour in their eyes, without facial features of note. ‘Mr Vaner received me in his cabin. He was a dashing young man in his early twenties, with his cap on the back of a head of brown curls.’ (p35) Plenty of writers don’t over-describe, arguing that the reader can visualise the character however they like. But in a novel that purports to be ‘real’, every tiny detail adds to the verisimilitude. The intimacy of detail lends credibility.

As a thriller, it succeeds in several aspects: the chase, the suspense engendered by hiding and the risk of discovery. The action, when it occurs is muted, reported rather than visualised. There is little ‘show’, only ‘tell’. The deathly struggle in the Underground is without visuals; fine, it’s dark, but there’s no visceral feeling of being there. (p55) The dramatic moment is lost.

Writers must observe, and Household was a keen observer, and described the world well: ‘… wandered through the quiet squares which smelled of a London August night – that perfume of dust and heavy flowers, held down by trees into the warm, well-dug ravines between the houses.’ (p57)  And, another: ‘I have noticed that what cats most appreciate in a human being is not the ability to produce food – which they take for granted – but his or her entertainment value.’ (p76) Yes, there is humour, despite the tense situation. And, surprisingly, considering the beginning of the novel, ‘To be shot from ambush is horribly unnerving.’ (p105)

The narrator decides to go to ground – literally – and constructs an under-earth burrow, stocking up with tinned goods. ‘Space I have none. The inner chamber is a tumbled morass of wet earth which I am compelled to use as a latrine. I am confined to my original excavation, the size of three large dog-kennels, where I lie on or inside my sleeping-bag.’ (p118) The description of the construction of his lair is well done, to make it very real and claustrophobic. Here, in a hedgerow (there were a lot more in England in 1939!) he makes the acquaintance of a cat. ‘We live in the same space, in the same way, and on the same food, except that Asmodeus has no use for oatmeal, nor I for field-mice.’ (p119)

One of his persistent pursuers goes by the name of Quive-Smith and the final confrontation with him is quite suspenseful. Here, we learn from Quive-Smith that ‘It’s the mass that we are out to discipline and educate. If an individual interferes, certainly we crush him; but for the sake of the mass – of the State, shall I say?’ (p136)This might indicate the Soviet frame of mind, rather than that of the Nazi. Hence, the leader could conceivably be Stalin, not Hitler; it matters not, both were worthy of assassination, as millions of dead souls would testify.

It is only when we get to p143 that we glean the motivation behind the narrator’s abortive mission. A nameless woman, his only love, put up against a wall and shot by followers of the leader. This section is woolly. We don’t know why she was done to death, though it’s likely she objected in some manner to the leader’s creed. And we certainly don’t see her in the narrator’s mind’s eye; so we have no empathy.

The story is told in three chapters, originally scribbled in an exercise book, which he posted to his solicitor friend, Saul (another character without description).

Reading this now, we know that whatever the narrator’s intention at the end of this written record, he failed. [However, there is a sequel, Rogue Justice (1982), in which we follow the narrator on his subsequent killing spree against Nazis.]

This book has been considered superior to Buchan’s The 39 Steps (1915), but I don’t believe it is. Certainly, it employs much that became familiar in thrillers – long flight and pursuit and the resourcefulness and pluckiness of the hero as exemplified by Buchan’s novel. They are both books of their time, and indeed both have inspired future thriller writers. If you’re a fan of thrillers and you haven’t read either of these, now is a good time to remedy that omission.

Writing – research - Beyond the Oxus

Most writers need to do some research for their books. That research shouldn’t be simply to insert blocks of text because it’s interesting, in the manner of Dan Brown. It should be used to get a feel for a place, a time, a people. There are countless books available to delve into to obtain details about the flora, fauna and culture, to lend credibility to the fiction. We’re not copying slavishly, or plagiarizing swathes of text, but ‘getting the feel’ to convey the ‘reality’.

My latest work in progress, set in Afghanistan in 1979-1980 has involved a huge amount of research reading. Yes, I’ve travelled through Pakistan and up the Khyber, but I haven’t been to Afghanistan itself, though that land has held a fascination as long back as the release of the film, King of the Khyber Rifles!

One of the books I’ve read is Beyond the Oxus by Monica Whitlock (2002). As a BBC correspondent for central Asia, Whitlock has gleaned a great deal from eye-witnesses. It’s a fascinating history of the central Asians, the people of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Inevitably, the book also concerns Afghanistan.

Besides personal accounts, Whitlock gives us fascinating history of a relatively unknown region.

Here, in 973, was born one of the greatest Muslim scholars, Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad, called Biruni, thankfully. ‘His study of the rotation of the earth was revolutionary. He calculated longitude and latitude, observed solar and lunar eclipses in detail, and was an early cartographer, mathematician, physicist, geographer and anthropologist. He spoke Aramaic, Greek and Sanskrit as well as Arabic and Persian.’ (p14)

Another important figure was ‘Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Musa, who disseminated through his treatise written in Baghdad in about 825, the Indian counting system that included decimal places and the concept of zero. This system reached Muslim Spain about a hundred and fifty years later, his treatise being translated into Latin in 1120 by an Englishman, Robert of Chester, who visited Spain to study mathematics…’ It took some seven hundred years after that treatise before the concept was widely used in Europe. He brought us the word ‘algebra’, not to mention Arabic ‘sefr’ which gave us ‘cipher’ and ‘zero’. (p15)

There are several tragic stories about lives ruined. One individual is Damulla Sharif, who fled to Afghanistan in 1927, along with almost half the population of his town. Some seven years later he chanced returning and crossed the border, but he was caught. ‘Before he was taken away, he made a hurried bonfire of his hundred-book library, rather than give them the pleasure. He spent the next twenty years in and out of prison, accused at one point of writing “anti-Soviet poetry”. By the time he was finally released in 1955 he could neither see nor walk properly, and was tormented by the memory of his burnt books. He resumed his studies none the less…’ He worked as a night watchman and in his free time taught and wrote poetry. (p97)

When Ella Ivanova was two, ‘Stalin ordered the evacuation of her village… about 450 miles south-east of Moscow, a solidly German corner of Russia ever since the first pioneers arrived at the invitation of Catherine the Great…’  Ella heard from her mother and sister what happened. They had 24 hours to get out, leaving their cow, and everything but the clothes they wore. They killed a pig, cut it up and took it with them. They were taken by train to Siberia, and her father was put in a concentration camp while her mother brought up four children in a one-room hut. Her mother was almost killed in a fight over a radish. When their teacher left, the replacement never arrived, she was eaten by wolves on the road. ‘Wolves hardly ever attack humans, and it tells you how hungry even they were.’

After Stalin’s death the family was reunited and headed for Tajikistan to find work. ‘We found a paradise on earth here!’ (pp99/100)

Stalin forcibly moved hundreds of thousands of families, many to Soviet Central Asia, presumably for fear that they would collaborate with the Nazis or the Japanese. Indeed, ‘compulsory migration had begun in the 1920s, as a means of moving labour to where it was needed.’  In order to increase the production of cotton, whole villages of Tajiks were moved to the plains, a forced migration that lasted from 1952 until the 1970s. Remarkably, one man hid his small library under the hay in the cattle shed and even when forcibly migrated, he took his books with him. Many had to construct their living quarters, families perished and starvation was normal; the workers didn’t get paid for six years. ‘They were set to work in the plantations in one of the hottest inhabited places on earth, and forbidden to return to their mountain homes for fifteen years.’ (p109)

This is but a very brief overview/review of an interesting book that takes the history up to 2002.  What shines through is the indomitable spirit of people to surmount the depredations of despots, to survive in spite of incredible hardship throughout a turbulent history.

Recommended reading. 

A shorter version of this review has been posted on Amazon.