The Devil's Oasis: A Novel - Softcover

Bull, Bartle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786709901 ISBN 13: 9780786709908

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2002

Synopsis

All the treacherous intrigue of cosmopolitan Cairo and fiery drama of Rommel's desert war in Africa continue the stirring historical adventure of the masterly Bartle Bull's two previous novels, The White Rhino Hotel and A Cafe on the Nile. It is now 1942, and Nazi Germany stands at the height of its power. In North Africa the brilliant general Rommel's panzers threaten the Suez Canal, the Middle East's oil fields, and the trade route to Asia, but to win Egypt Rommel must first take the port of Tobruk and destroy the British fortress of Bir Hakeim. There, against the massive force of Rommel's Afrika Korps, a young English hussar named Wellington Rider fights beside the French Foreign Legion. Wellington's father, the professional hunter Anton Rider, is now operating as a desert commando and is engaged in the obliteration of Nazi air bases and petrol dumps. Not only has Anton's old friend Ernst von Decken, a German soldier of fortune, meanwhile become the enemy, but also Anton's estranged wife has entered into an affair with a Frenchman who supports Rommel's campaign. Alliances shift, loyalties deceive, espionage thrives, and peril lies as much in the dark corners of Cairo as it does in the desert night. "...after three volumes of nonstop action, eroticism and intrigue, we still care about what happens to ... Mr. Bull's extravagant cast."—Richard Bernstein, New York Times "A World War II page-turner that's part Masterpiece Theatre, part Raiders of the Lost Ark, part Casablanca."—Washington Post

About this title

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.

From Publishers Weekly

HThe dashing series that began with The White Rhino Hotel and continued with A Caf‚ on the Nile is moving its larger-than-life cast of exiles in 20th-century North Africa further ahead in time with each book. Still at the center of this latest installment is the exotic Goan dwarf Olivio Alavedo, with his circle of English friends, his beautiful children and his long-nurtured dreams of vengeance on those who have slighted him. The dashing Anton Rider is, as always, on the outs with his lovely and plucky wife, Gwenn, last seen nursing tribesmen mown down by Mussolini's troops in Eritrea. Now it's 1939, and war is about to engulf Cairo and the whole of North Africa, pitting Rider's old buddy, the brutally macho Ernst von Decken, against those accursed Englanders. Gwenn and Anton's eldest son, Wellington, insists on joining the army; what else can a chap do? Once again Gwenn has chosen the wrong lover, a terminally corrupt French fence-sitter, but all that is soon swept aside as the magnetic General Rommel and his Afrika Korps roar in to seize the Suez Canal. Yes, there's a role for wily old desert hand Anton, too, in harassing the German supply lines. It's an all-out, gung-ho war adventure, with much of the period glamour of The English Patient, but not a spot of psychological subtlety. The battle scenes are grimly garish, the plentiful suffering is endured in appropriate stiff-upper-lip silence. Exotic adventure fiction doesn't come much better and there's obviously a fourth chapter waiting in the wings. (Apr.)Forecast: A 30,000-copy first printing and a $30,000 ad/promo budget attest to the publisher's well-warranted faith in this series. Strong word of mouth from those who have enjoyed previous installments, plus some admiring reviews, should bring in new devotees of black-and-white wartime derring-do.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0786709901
• ISBN 13: 9780786709908
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 348