William Boyd's new novel, The Romantic, is available to pre-order now

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

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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 the conflict sweeps up Africans and colonials, so those left at home and those fighting abroad find themselves unable to escape the tide of history bearing down on them.

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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