DaveWells.us

Up-and-coming writer John Boot des­per­ately wants an excuse to leave Lon­don so as to escape an unwanted admirer. He spots the per­fect oppor­tu­nity when civil war breaks out in the African Repub­lic of Ish­maelia. He per­suades an influ­en­tial friend to get him a job as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent for one of the major Lon­don news­pa­pers. This friend con­vinces Lord Cop­per, the head of the Dail Beast, to hire boot and send him to Ish­maelia. But owing to ambigu­ous instruc­tions and sub­or­di­nates eager to cater to Lord Copper’s every whim, the wrong Boot gets shipped to Africa.

William Boot has no aspi­ra­tions to fame or adven­ture; prior to his pro­mo­tion to for­eign cor­re­spon­dent, William had writ­ten a bi-weekly nature col­umn for the Beast from the com­port of his some­what ram­shackle rural fam­ily estate. Now, William finds him­self in a land about which he knows noth­ing, assigned to a task for which he has lit­tle apti­tude, expe­ri­ence, or inter­est. On top of this, he has to con­tend with schem­ing com­peti­tors, slow and mis­di­rected telegrams, and the vagaries of the ever-changing Ish­maelite government.

Waugh is in top form here, sat­i­riz­ing sen­sa­tion­al­ist news­men, incom­pe­tent busi­ness lead­ers, banana republics, and a hand­ful of other things. Some of his ref­er­ences are a lit­tle obscure for a reader sep­a­rated from him by sev­enty years and the Atlantic Ocean, but the rest of the book is hilar­i­ous enough to more than make up for it.