Dymphna Cusack (1902–1981)

Hard on the heels of a contemporary novel about resurgent post-war Nazism in the 1950s, (The Watchmaker's War (2026) by Danny Ben-Moshe, see my review), came the utterly unexpected same theme in a novel that I read for the #1961 Club.

With the benefit of 21st century hindsight which readers of 1961 obviously did not have, I was expecting from this description that the 'dark secrets' of this novel would be about a wife's shocked discovery that her husband's family had been Nazi industrialists, show more perhaps profiteering from the manufacture of munitions, and perhaps employing slave labour. These may well have been 'dark secrets' for readers of the Sun-Herald Readers Club in 1961, especially for those too young to have watched the cinema newsreels from the immediate aftermath of WW2. By 1961, West Germany was normalised as part of the Cold War anti-communist west: it had been welcomed into NATO in 1955, and was allowed rearmament against the Soviet Bloc.

If this had been a contemporary novel, I might not have been so surprised by its revelations. But reading this novel from 1961 I was not expecting that when the penny dropped for this naïve and somewhat complacent character, Joy would discover that the Von Muhlers were still enthusiastic Nazis anticipating and actively working towards a resurgence of the Third Reich. Having conned Stephen 'home' with false warnings about his beloved mother's health, they were demanding that he stay to help with their plans and they had the connections to prevent his departure. I was also not expecting that their sick child would be treated by a doctor (probably modelled on Herta Oberheuser) who was convicted of medical experimentation on women and children at the Ravensbrück concentration camp but released after only five years of a 20 year sentence. And I was certainly not expecting that Joy's husband, an otherwise kind and decent man, had as a youth participated himself in atrocities.

I was intrigued, and troubled: what was the impetus for this story by an Australian author? How authoritative was it, and what were Cusack's research sources? It's commonplace now for books to include an Author's Note that provides such information, but that was not so in 1961 when readers had to take a story on trust.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2026/04/14/heat-wave-in-berlin-1961-by-dymphna-cusack/

BEWARE: SPOILERS show less

This is a wonderful piece of Australian literature. It captures the lived experience of Sydney and the "American Occupation" during the Second World War, bringing to life the social history I studied in one of Joan Beaumont's classes at Deakin University. I am rediscovering Australian literature that for some reason is hidden behind the cultural cringe. This 1953 version of the work is apparently heavily abridged, and a later version edited from the original manuscript includes the parts show more about rape, prostitution, and abortion that were not allowed to be published when first released in 1951. I enjoy discovering great literature at bric-a-brac stores, but it really makes we wonder how such gems escape the Australian education system. The tales of tragedy, glamour, despair, and comeuppance, following the lives of a handful of young women in 1940s Sydney, expose a reality that was well-hidden by my great-grandparents and their facade of morality. Maybe this is why the work has not had its proper place in Australian literature, despite a television series based on the book that seems to have also disappeared into history. show less

While set in the 1920s-1940s, Cusack's sort-of-memoir of her time as a teacher - during which she taught at around 14 schools in 22 years - is well-worth reading for its insight into teaching and education, into the development of her political and social conscience, and, to some degree, into her as a writer. For my full review, please see Whispering Gums: http://whisperinggums.com/2013/07/25/dymphna-cusack-a-window-in-the-dark-review/

Coming of age novel about three women in 1930s Sydney when opportunities started to open up for women, but social values and attitudes had not caught up. For my full review, please see: http://whisperinggums.com/2015/05/08/dymphna-cusack-jungfrau-review/