Effective epic paints vivid picture of war

In the 1950s and ’60s, Sarah Gainham was a well-known journalist and author of spy thrillers, set in central Europe — where she lived for 50 years. Born Rachel Stainer, she left London after the war, never to live in England again.

With her journalist husband, Antony Terry, she moved in interesting circles in post-war Vienna and Berlin. He was a friend of Ian Fleming and the couple both had connections with MI6. It is said that it was Gainham who drew Ian Fleming’s attention to the Soviet agent Emma Wolff, the basis for the unforgettable Rosa Klebb in From Russia, with Love.

This world of spies and espionage in post-war central Europe was the background to her first five novels, written in the late ’50s. But the novel that made her name was the 1967 title, Night Fall on the City. The first of a trilogy, followed by A Place in the Country (1968) and Private Worlds (1971).

This story of love and collaboration in Nazi-occupied Vienna was a huge bestseller when first published, remaining top of the New York Times bestseller list for several months. Until recently it was largely forgotten, like its author, who died in Austria in 1999, but now it has been republished.

It begins in 1938, on the eve of the Anschluss. Beautiful actress Julia Homburg and her politician husband Franz Wedeker are members of the wealthy, cultured elite in pre-war Vienna. But Franz is Jewish and his wife, Julia, still working in the theatre, is forced into a life of deception, hiding her husband, learning to live by her wits.

Gainham’s greatest achievement is to move outwards from this initial story of love and courage. She creates a large cast of fascinating characters and weaving in and out of their stories creates a gripping picture of wartime Vienna, from cooks and secretaries to the highest ranks of the SS.

Above all, her Vienna, like Dante’s inferno, has several different circles of hell. There are the vicious antisemitic thugs, informers and collaborators, cowards who make their peace with the new regime for the sake of a peaceful life and then there are the most evil of all, the Gestapo, SS and the Office of Jewish Emigration, even Heydrich himself who appears in a cameo. Amid it all, Julia tries to keep her husband alive, making compromises, even embarking on a passionate affair.

At times the prose and the exposition are clunky, the story is melodramatic, and yet, increasingly, we are drawn into a compelling world. Gainham is a master storyteller who brilliantly captures the atmosphere of fear and insecurity, a world where you can trust no one. The most powerful scenes are in wartime Poland and in Vienna, in 1945, as everything collapses into confusion and chaos.

More Herman Wouk than Hans Falada, but Gainham’s wartime epic raises interesting questions about the ability of skilful midstream writers to bring to life the drama and moral complexity of Second World War central Europe.

David Herman is the JC’s chief fiction reviewer