An Ice-Cream War (Penguin audiobooks)

William, Boyd

ISBN 10: 0140862552 ISBN 13: 9780140862553

Publisher: Penguin, 1997

Synopsis

This audiobook concerns the fortunes of the Cobb family, and their two sons, Gabriel and Felix, who one after the other enlist and fight for their country in German East Africa. Both have very different reasons and different, though equally tragic results.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

'As ambitious as it is remarkable. Balances on seesaws of innocence and violence, sanity and lunacy, hilarity and horror' The Times

'We will all melt like ice-cream in the sun!'
British soldier, East Africa, 1914

On the Western Front millions are being slaughtered. But in East Africa a ridiculous and utterly ignored campaign is being waged - one that continues after the Armistice because no one bothers to tell the participants to stop.

As millions are swept up in the conflict, An Ice-Cream War contrasts the fortunes of those languishing at home with those fighting abroad swept up in the passions of battlefield and bed chamber, while history makes up its mind whether events shall be played either as tragedy or comedy.

'A towering achievement' John Carey

'Compulsively readable' Blake Morrison, Observer

'Funny, assured, a seriocomic romp. A study of people caught in the side pockets of calamity that dramatizes their plights with humour, detail and grit' Harper's

About the Author:

William Boyd s first novel, A Good Man in Africa, won a Whitbread Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award; his second, An Ice-Cream War, was awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Brazzaville Beach won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; and The Blue Afternoon won the Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction. Boyd lives in London."

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0140862552
• ISBN 13: 9780140862553
• Binding: Audio Cassette
• Number of pages: 2