“Peace for our Time”: a Uchronian Approach to British Fascism in Jo Walton’s "Farthing"

Abstract

This paper draws on a uchronian framework to analyse Jo Walton’s Farthing (2006) as a suitable example of a counterfactual Britain in the aftermath of an effective peace agreement with Nazi Germany. The following pages will attempt to intertwine the purely historical comment on the intricacies that underlay the rise of fascism in the country with the allohistorical turns that ignite the plot of the novel and its point of divergence, which brings about the appointment of a fascist militant as Prime Minister and the outburst of a violent antisemitic wave. The study of this novel will be informed by a wide array of critics and historians like Amy Ramson, Karen Hellekson, Richard Thurlow or Nigel Copsey, among others, whose work contributes to tracing significant parallelisms between the historical outcome and the uchronian alternatives Walton explores in her work