An Ice Cream War
by Boyd, William
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- See description
- ISBN 10
- 0241108683
- ISBN 13
- 9780241108680
- Seller
-
Bromsgrove, West Midlands, United Kingdom
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1982 0241108683. First edition. First printing. Hardback. No annotations or inscriptions. Mylar-protected DW is NOT price-clipped. Author's difficult to find third book. 370 pp. 14 cms. by 22 cms. Ex-university library with usual stamps. There is a (water?) stain down the join of the pages 20 and 21. Otherwise VG/VG in unclipped DW. The novel evokes suggestions of the early Evelyn Waugh as a critic of The New York Times wrote at its time of publication. An Ice-Cream War is William Boyd's sparkling debut novel on the grimly comic side of conflict,. What do you think would happen if I shot an elephant in the balls?' 'I think it would hurt a great deal.' Millions die on the Western Front but in East Africa a quite different war is being waged - one with little point and which is so ignored that it will carry on after the Armistice because no one bothers to tell both sides to stop. As the conflict sweeps up natives and colonials, so those left at home and those fighting abroad find themselves unable to escape the tide of history bearing down on them.The novel could be considered a satire on the ineptitude of authority in wartime. A recurring character, District Officer Wheech-Browning, spreads chaos wherever he goes, such that Smith observes that every time he goes somewhere with Wheech-Browning, someone in their company meets an unfortunate death' Wikipedia. "Its characters – the survivors in particular – are mercilessly knocked about by the force of historical circumstance: by the war, by the problems of commanding men whose culture they do not understand and whose language they do not even speak, by the influenza epidemic that followed immediately upon the Armistice. But Mr. Boyd sees even domestic life, as Gabriel's and Felix's mother sees her marriage, 'as a relentless challenge, an unending struggle against appalling adverse conditions to get her own way.' .
Synopsis
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.
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Details
- Bookseller
- David Edward Hellawell (GB)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 5
- Title
- An Ice Cream War
- Author
- Boyd, William
- Format/Binding
- Hardback
- Book Condition
- Used
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10
- 0241108683
- ISBN 13
- 9780241108680
- Publisher
- London: Hamish Hamilton, 1982 0241108683
- Place of Publication
- London
- This edition first published
- 1982
- Pages
- 370
- Keywords
- Novel Africa WWI Military War Colony Germans British QSE
Terms of Sale
David Edward Hellawell
I will refund the cost if the book is returned within 7 days with details of where the description was faulty.
About the Seller
David Edward Hellawell
About David Edward Hellawell
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- VG/VG
- Very Good Condition book with a Very Good Condition dust jacket. Very Good Condition indicates a used book that does show some...