1936, or as it was released in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth Countries, Year of the Rat, is a 1920 political novel by American author E.M. Scott. The novel follows the misfortunes of the Hornhill family during the rise of the charismatic Prohibitionist Senator Harold Caldwell, and the emergence of a dictatorship under his Presidency.
Loosely satirical of the then-outgoing Wilson Administration and introduction of Prohibition, the novel's plot concerns freshman US Representative Jahn Andrew Honhill, elected to Congress in 1934 as part of a 'Hero wave' following his service in a devastating war with an unspecified South American state, and his estranged sister, Johanna Adelaide Hornhill, a peace activist and journalist living in Washington D.C., as both track the rise of Senator Harold Caldwell, and their struggle against his increasingly authoritarian regime in the lead up to a 1940 election.
The novel received mixed reviews at publication, who were keen to note the similarities between Caldwell and outgoing President Woodrow Wilson, with Democratic Party critics decrying the novels choice to show the party cozying with Caldwell's 'America First' movement. Though some would note the novel as predicting fascism, it was largely forgotten until the 1980s, when the novel experienced a brief revival following an ABC miniseries starring Gabriel Byrne as J. Andrew, Shelly Duvall as J. Adelaide, and Sam Neill as President Caldwell. The book remains an object of curiosity within political hobby circles due to its detailed accounts of both the 1936 and 1940 elections that bookend it.
Ohhhh,nice alt-It Can't Happen Here.
