In an alternate world where a victorious Nazi Germany has enslaved the native populations of Africa, former assassin Burton Cole struggles to stop a threat against Britain's surviving colonies from a messianic racist with ties to a brutal plot. - (Baker & Taylor)

A tale set in an alternate world where a victorious Nazi Germany has enslaved the native populations of Africa traces the efforts of former assassin Burton Cole to stop a threat against Britain's surviving colonies by a messianic racist with ties to a brutal plot. A first novel. 35,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)

From Guy Saville, the explosive new thriller of a world that so nearly existed

Africa, 1952. More than a decade has passed since Britain's humiliation at Dunkirk brought an end to the war and the beginning of an uneasy peace with Hitler.

The swastika flies from the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. Britain and a victorious Nazi Germany have divided the continent. The SS has crushed the native populations and forced them into labor. Gleaming autobahns bisect the jungle, jet fighters patrol the skies. For almost a decade an uneasy peace has ensued.

Now, however, the plans of Walter Hochburg, messianic racist and architect of Nazi Africa, threaten Britain's ailing colonies.

Sent to curb his ambitions is Burton Cole: a one-time assassin torn between the woman he loves and settling an old score with Hochburg. If he fails unimaginable horrors will be unleashed on the continent. No one – black or white – will be spared.

But when his mission turns to disaster, Burton must flee for his life.

It is a flight that will take him from the unholy ground of Kongo to SS slave camps to war-torn Angola – and finally a conspiracy that leads to the dark heart of The Afrika Reich itself.

Guy Saville was born in 1973. He has lived in South America and the Middle East and is currently based in the UK. The Afrika Reich is his first novel.

Booklist Reviews

Saville's debut novel makes an energetic leap into alternate history. Britain's 1940 Dunkirk evacuation fails, and Lord Halifax and Hitler negotiate a peace that includes German control of a vast swath of Africa, from the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. Fast-forward to 1952, and Walter Hochburg, the psychopathic governor-general of Kongo, is building autobahns through the jungle paved with the ground-up corpses of Nazi soldiers (to plant Nazi spirit in Africa's very soil). A small team of mercenaries led by Burton Cole, who has a personal score to settle with Hochburg, is hired to assassinate the governor-general, but the mercs are betrayed and pursued relentlessly by Hochburg and hordes of fanatical SS, providing Saville more opportunities for gun battles, carnage, and barbarity than most Hollywood action films. His alternate history is imaginative and superficially plausible; an author's note cites actual Nazi interest in Africa and its resources. Many readers who study WWII and the Nazis might question this scenario, but, if they can suspend disbelief, they'll enjoy the wild, running battle against contemporary history's greatest villains. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.