Katharine Burdekin's dystopian novel was written in the early 1930s, but all but disappeared without a trace later on in the decade because its subject matter was considered detrimental to the morale of a nation under threat of German invasion. The novel presents a vision of the future inspired by Adolf Hitler's assertion that he would create a Thousand Year Reich; Burdekin's story is set in a futuristic world where Jews have been eradicated, Christians are severely marginalized, and Hitler has taken the place of God. Understandably, this was not the uplifting kind of thing that people wanted to read, when their day to day reality of the German enemy was quite bad enough.
Burdekin published the book under the pseudonym Murray Constantine, for two main reasons; the first was that she believed the publishing industry had very set ideas about what kind of novel a woman of her era should be writing, and the second was that having such obviously left wing views did not make her terrifically popular, and she feared that were her true identity known then her family might be threatened or harmed in some way. Because of this, and the fact that the book disappeared from view until the 1980s, it was not really known that Burdekin had authored the novel at all. It was not until a diligent researcher with a passion for feminist dystopian fiction identified Burdekin as the author of the novel that it was re-published and credited to her.
As a writer, Burdekin is considered to be a feminist, but she also had a lifelong interest in time travel. Consequently her writing tends to concentrate on these twin themes, and although she penned over twenty novels in her lifetime, she is best known for the book that, for most of the twentieth century, nobody realized she had actually written.
