A Cafe on the Nile - Softcover

Bull, Bartle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786706759 ISBN 13: 9780786706754

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 1999

Synopsis

East Africa, 1935. A nation sits at the brink of war, a city is fraught with conspiracy, and at the Cataract Café in Cairo, a colorful cast of characters - professional hunter Anton Rider, his estranged wife and her Italian lover, the pampered American twins Bernadette and Harriet Mills, a German freebooter who has stolen a fortune in silver from the Italian army, the Goan dwarf and café proprietor Olivio Alevado - gathers to gamble with destiny. "Pulses with entertainment value . . . The sort of yarn that can keep you up late at night . . . [A] spirited, sensuous, hot-blooded evocation of a rich and eventful historical world" - Richard Bernstein, New York Times "A breathtakingly entertaining historical novel . . . packed with daring exploits and sinister intrigues, with larger-than-life characters and exotic locales" - Orlando Sentinel "An enthralling novel" - Booklist "[A] rattling good blockbuster yarn" - Publishers Weekly "A Café on the Nile achieves the aim of fiction: The reader gladly suspends disbelief." - Houston Chronicle "[Bull] is a terrific novelist." - San Jose Mercury News

About this title

Review

Where are the new Casablancas coming from? Here's one possible source. Bartle Bull, a lawyer, publisher, explorer, and writer, centers his latest thriller at the Cataract Cafe, a floating version of Rick's in 1935 Cairo. The owner, Olivio, is a dwarf from Goa, and his regular customers include a stalwart British professional hunter, his unfaithful wife and her lover, an Italian aviator, American twin sisters in search of all kinds of adventure, and various rogue Germans, including a doctor who regrets not being able to use Olivio for medical research. Bull's writing is wry and deceptively simple:

The waiter set before the doctor a glass of warm boiled water and the flesh of a Nile perch, cleaned from the bone and rearranged on the plate in the shape of a smaller fish. The water was pink from the three spoonfuls of vinegar that had been stirred into it, the day's first weapon in his battle with arthritis. The German leaned forward. His high hooked nose hung over the table like a chimney over a fireplace as he widened his nostrils and smelled the fish.

Outside the cafe, larger forces are at work: Mussolini is helping to start World War II with his attacks on Abyssinia, and other countries are jockeying for power. By focusing on the lives of a few assorted cafe goers, Bull makes his book add up to much more than a hill of beans--he gives us a rich, exciting picture of a world about to disappear. --Dick Adler

About the Author

Bartle Bull is the author of the widely praised African novels The White Rhino Hotel, A Cafe on the Nile, and The Devil's Oasis. He is a member of the Royal Geographical Society and the Explorers Club and was the publisher of the Village Voice.

Edition details

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786706759
• ISBN 13: 9780786706754
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480