Author:Giles Foden
At the start of World War One, German warships controlled Lake Tanganyika in Central Africa. The British had no naval craft at all upon 'Tanganjikasee', as the Germans called it. This mattered: it was the longest lake in the world and of great strategic advantage. In June 1915, a force of 28 men was despatched from Britain on a vast journey. Their orders were to take control of the lake. To reach it, they had to haul two motorboats with the unlikely names of Mimi and Toutou through the wilds of the Congo.
The 28 were a strange bunch -- one was addicted to Worcester sauce, another was a former racing driver -- but the strangest of all of them was their skirt-wearing, tattoo-covered commander, Geoffrey Spicer-Simson. Whatever it took, even if it meant becoming the god of a local tribe, he was determined to cover himself in glory. But the Germans had a surprise in store for Spicer-Simson, in the shape of their secret 'supership' the Graf von Gotzen . . .
Unearthing new German and African records, the prize-winning author of The Last King of Scotland retells this most unlikely of true-life tales with his customary narrative energy and style.
Fitzcarraldo meets Heart of Darkness, this is rich, vivid and flashmanesque in its appeal - military history at its most absorbing and entertaining
Another delightful tale sieved from the flotsam of African military history from a writer who is fast creating a niche of his own
—— ArenaFoden has brought to life one of the strangest episodes of the first world war'... a real romp through the desert of darkness and extremely funny
—— Sunday TimesGiles Foden writes with wit ... give it a read
—— Literary ReviewBased on fact and meticulously researched, it is a moving novel. Robert Hicks is a superb storyteller.
—— Choice'A sleeping giant'
—— USA TodayThis remarkable debut novel has an unflinching eye for detail and is at once a meditation on the futility of war and a paen to the power of he human spirit.
—— ChoiceNicholas Stargardt's compelling new book tells exactly what was happening to the children of Europe who had been living under the Nazi regime...Stargardt's is, indeed, a terrible story: it is an account of the endless tramp of the innocents across Europe, a saga of cruelty, starvation, separation, loss and abject misery with lives without number ending in death
—— Juliet Gardiner , Daily MailChildren are history's forgotten people; amidst the sound and fury of battle, as commanders decide the fate of empires, they are never seen. Yet as Nicholas Stargardt reveals in his heart-rending account of children's lives under the Nazis, to ignore them is to leave history half-written. This is an excellent book and it tells a terrible story... As Stargardt so eloquently reminds us, the tragedy is that children were part of the equation and suffered accordingly
—— Trevor Royle , Sunday Herald'Nicholas Stargardt evokes the individual voices of children under Nazi rule. In re-creating their wartime experiences, he has produced a challenging new historical interpretation of the Second World War
—— History Today
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