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Public V Private Networks: Will There be a Choice? : Seminar Papers : 18th November, 1985, London - Tapa blanda
Críticas
'A war-torn farce worth waiting for' (The Independent 2009-11-23)
'Now Alex Capus has added another layer to this strange episode in a sideshow of the first world war, with a wonderful fictionalised account of what the Germans did while Spicer pranced about in his skirt.' (Giles Foden The Spectator 2009-12-14)
The French-Swiss novelist Alex Capus bases his 10th book on a highly eccentric character and a farcical incident early in the First World War. Kaiser Wilhelm's outnumbered soldiers rattled sabres at Belgian troops and a small Royal Navy expeditionary force over the massive expanse of Lake Tanganyika in central Africa. By 1913, Geoffrey Basil Spicer-Simson had served three miserable years charting the course of the Gambia river in a clapped-out steam launch. After recall to the excitement of war-footing Britain, his hapless career endures fresh humiliation. Charged with minesweeping duties off the Thames estuary, Spicer-Simson manages to be onshore entertaining his wife to lunch when a German submarine torpedoes his vessel. The resulting court martial and demotion is only reprieved when the Admiralty has no spare officer for a secret mission. Elated, Spicer-Simson seizes his heroic opportunity, hauling two armed speedboats by rail from Cape Town and overland through jungle to counter Germany's naval control of Lake Tanganyika. Giles Foden fleshed out this military sideshow in his 2004 book Mimi and Toutou Go Forth, and Capus similarly captures Spicer-Simson's "incorrigible megalomania". He diverges from Foden by balancing Spicer-Simson's sense of theatre with the reluctant progress of master shipwright Anton Rüter, assembling the Kaiser's gunship Götzen. Rüter's strained relations with his superior officer steadily ratchet up tension in a novel that, like much of war, is preoccupied with waiting. Spicer-Simson's easily lampoonable character makes for comic entertainment, but Capus warms to a surprisingly sympathetic view of his military performance. This enriches the psychology of a peculiar man on a bizarre mission. If the final maritime skirmishes hold echoes of The African Queen, Capus's quiet denouement resonates with that other Bogart classic, Casablanca. This droll morsel of martial history, in the main, makes up for inactivity with the conflicted ambitions of its protagonists. (James Urquhart 2009-12-23)
Reseña del editor
In November 1913, three German shipbuilders, led by master shipwright Anton Rüter, were ordered by Kaiser Wilhelm II to dismantle a steam ship, send the parts to German East Africa, and reassemble it on Lake Tanganyi- ka. Their initial aim of getting the task done quickly and returning home to claim an excellent salary is quickly eclipsed by the enchantment of the exotic landscape, the governor’s beautiful wife, and the violent machinery of colonialism. At the same time, Winston Churchill sends Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simson to transport two dilapidated and incongruously named gun-boats, Mimi and Toutou, to the other side of the lake. When World War I breaks out the Germans and British are facing each other, and the boat-builders reluctantly find themselves having to fight under the unsympathetic Captain-Lieutenant Gustav von Zimmer.
"Sobre este título" puede pertenecer a otra edición de este libro.
- EditorialHaus Publishing Limited
- Año de publicación1985
- ISBN 10 0907822762
- ISBN 13 9780907822769
- EncuadernaciónTapa blanda
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