60 pages • 2 hours read
Ken FollettNever
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Munchkin Country
Munchkin Country is the nickname used by US government insiders for what is technically called the US Government Overflow Storage Facility #2 but what is really an underground bunker in which important members of the government could shelter in the occurrence of a catastrophic event. Not only does the use of nicknames like this decrease fear or anxiety when the place or item is used, but it also creates a sense of being an insider and part of a club. A similar term used to name the nuclear football that contains the codes needed to confirm the president’s identity and authority to launch nuclear war is “the Biscuit.” This name occurs in the novel and in real life as well. The US government has given bombs similar nicknames, such as “Thin Man,” “Fat Man,” and the atomic “Little Boy.”
The name “Munchkin Country” references the Hollywood musical fantasy film The Wizard of Oz (1939) based on the series by L. Frank Baum. In the film, Dorothy’s house is flown in a tornado from the normal world to that of the magical and chaotic Oz. A quote spoken by Dorothy to her dog, “Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore,” is a saying and meme to express that things are no longer normal but rather uncomfortable and unknown. If the US government needed to shelter in Munchkin Country, it would mean that the country and likely the world had entered a situation that was at the very least unknown and uncomfortable but more likely terrifying. The shelter frames the story, as the Prologue and as the final chapter. Even though the text introduces it in a light-hearted manner, the last section of the Prologue contains foreshadowing that proves accurate over the course of the novel.
Lake Chad
Lake Chad represents a negative result of globalization that has consequences that go well beyond those immediately or directly impacted. This freshwater lake is the site of Kiah’s village in the novel, located between the countries of Chad, Nigeria, Niger, and Cameroon. It is an important wetland ecosystem that provides the livelihood of approximately 30-40 million villagers who rely on it for fishing, irrigating their crops, and drinking water for themselves and their animals. The lake has been shrinking steadily for decades due to climate change and human water diversion. In the 1900s, it was 28,000 square kilometers and is now between 2-5,000 square kilometers.
This region is among the poorest on the globe, and desperate farmers and fishermen who can no longer support their families are vulnerable to the call of terrorist groups like that seen in the novel. Terrorists might murder those who refuse to join, like Kiah’s husband. Tensions over different uses of the water (fishing versus farming or husbandry) can erupt within or between villages or even across national boundaries. People become desperate like Kiah and attempt the arduous journey across the Sahara and then the Mediterranean, joining the hundreds of thousands who arrive in Europe every year. The lake represents the impact of imperialism, too, as Chad’s literal life source is impacted by global politics and environmental harm. To retain their water source, Chad must ally themselves with China and in effect allow China to run them politically as a colony.
Hufra
Hufra is the Arabic word for hole and the name of the headquarters where the CIA believes the leader of the terrorist group, Al-Farabi, is hiding. The CIA also refers to him as the “Afghan” because he had fought as a foreign mujahideen against the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. While the more localized terrorists around Lake Chad were likely meant to be similar to Boko Haram (which translated means “(Western) Education Is Forbidden”), Al-Farabi’s group the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara or ISGS seems to be a combination of the Islamic State and its rival Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda emerged from fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan and developed into an umbrella organization that trained terrorists from around the world. Led for years by the Saudi Osama Bin Laden, the group is most infamously behind the 1998 attack on two US embassies in Africa and the 2001 attacks on 9/11 in the US. The Islamic State arose in Iraq, initially funded by and temporarily joined with Al Qaeda; it eventually broke away to form its own network of terrorist cells throughout the world.
The headquarters turn out to be illegal gold mines in Libya; calling it a “Hole” is apropos. Not only is mining there done underground in holes, but a hole suggests someplace an animal like a rodent would live in underground, an indirect act of dehumanization through connotation aimed at the terrorists. This terrorist camp is hidden in an uninhabited part of the desert, protected in part by old land mines in the Aouzou area bordering Chad and Libya. These mines are left over from conflict between the two countries, when Libya occupied what is today part of northern Chad. A report by The Hague Center for Strategic Studies introduced the term “terrorist black hole,” which it defined as:
a geographic entity where, due to the absent or ineffective exercise of state governance, criminal or terrorist elements can deploy activities in support of, or otherwise directly relating to criminal or terrorist acts including the act itself (Korteweg, Rem, and David Erhardt. “Terrorist Black Holes.” Clingendael Centre for Strategic Studies. TNO Defense, Security and Safety, 2005).
This could very easily apply to the southern reaches of what is now Libya, which even under Qaddafi was for some time on the US State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. Several terrorist leaders have hidden in “holes” such as Libya’s Qaddafi (whom a rebel fighter discovered in a drainpipe), Iraq’s Saddam Hussain (whom an interpreter with the US army found in a “spider hole” or small underground bunker), and Al-Qaeda’s Bin Laden (whom the US military believed was hiding in the Tora Bora cave complex of eastern Afghanistan).
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