Nonesuch
A Novel
If Winston Churchill had died before World War II began, he wouldn’t have been around to rally the British to fight Hitler, in which case Great Britain might well have stayed out of the war, effectively handing Europe to the Nazis. This counterfactual hypothesis is impossible to prove, but in the magic of Francis Spufford’s novel it may be put to the test. In the early months of the war, as Churchill mobilizes the nation, members of the British Union of Fascists discover a way to travel back in time; they aim to return to September 29, 1939, to assassinate Churchill and redirect the course of history.
Standing in their way is Iris Hawkins, a nervy assistant at a London brokerage firm, who stumbles onto their plan and learns, via angelic beings, about “quantum tunneling” through time. With the proper incantations, uttered at the proper sites in London, a bridge can be constructed to Nonesuch, the place “where all times are present.” Iris is the one person who can block the project and fend off the “magical fascist lunatics.”
Spufford is one of few writers with the ability to pull off such a historical-fantastical adventure story. His novels have always displayed an avid historical interest, and this one is thick with details of wartime London, from food rationing to the fate of the British fascists known as Mosleyites. The novel often reads like a tribute to the cityscape of 1939–1940, which Spufford appears to know by heart, much of it now vanished because of war or urban renewal.
