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Chargement... The General Danced at Dawnpar George MacDonald Fraser
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. This book never fails to make me laugh until my sides hurt, and my badly-battered former library copy is one of my most prized possessions. Although it's fiction, it deals with a part of the Second World War that is not often addressed in literature; specifically, the North African campaign, and how brutal the fighting was for all parties involved. The context used is one of the Highland Regiments of the British Army, and the personalities involved are all utterly hilarious. From the enlisted men to the officers, the chaplain who goes into metaphysical trances in the pulpit, and the assorted cast of civilians of all kinds, it uses humor to talk about what the men saw and experienced in a way that makes readers laugh aloud, but also makes them reach for a notepad to do further research after they're done reading. In summation: amazing realistic wartime fiction, encourages further learning, and side-splittingly funny. This and the second of this series, MacAuslan in the Rough, are some of Fraser's best work, more consistently funny and with more decent characters than the better-known Flashman books. These stories are apparently loosely based on the latter part of Fraser's real military career, as an officer in a Scottish regiment just after World War II. Since his non-fiction account Quartered Safe Out Here ends with his going for promotion to officer after sreving as an enlisted man in Burma, in effect this acts as a sequel to Quartered, though on the whole that is more serious. (I suppose even FRaser would find it hard to be funny about fighting the Japanese in Burma.) Humorous account of a young officer in charge of a platoon of Scots Highlanders in the time directly after WWII, from 1946-1950 in the Middle East, North Africa nad home in Scotland. Well done stories like Fraser usually tells. I had read this years ago, but it was still fresh and funny. Very specific though, and many of the Scots words that he used with his characters were not translate, which is perhaps for the good. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Appartient à la sérieMcAuslan (1) Est contenu dans
Private McAuslan, J., the Dirtiest Soldier in the World (alias the Tartan Caliban or the Highland Division's answer to Pekin Man) demonstrates his unfitness for the service in this first volume of stories of life in a Scottish regiment. Unkempt, ungainly and unwashed... civilian readers may regard him with shocked disbelief, but a generation of ex-servicemen have already hailed him with delight as an old familiar friend. 'Written in the first person, and reading authentically, it purports to record episodes in the life of the young officer, newly commissioned into a Highland regiment after service in the ranks at the very end of the war... Twenty-five years have not dimmed Mr Fraser's recollections of those hectic days of soldiering. One takes leave of his characters with real and grateful regret'SIR BERNARD FERGUSSON, 'Sunday Times' 'It's a while since I enjoyed a book so much, and, indeed, once I'd finished it, I felt like starting it all over again'GLASGOW EVENING TIMES 'It's great fun and rings true: a Highland Fling of a book'ERIC LINKLATER Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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In a later scene Fraser describes an unspecified royal Dutchess giving out prizes at Regimental Games. When the youngster who took second place in the childrens' foot race replies to her remarks with an unprintable description of his opponent: "There was a few seconds' horrified frozen silence, in which the Duchess's charming smile altered by not one fraction." the Regimental Sergeant-Major quickly leans forward to add, "'He is saying "Thank you very much", Your Highness. In Gaelic.'" The author remarks: "You cannot shake a Regimental Sergeant-Major; whatever the situation, he is unconquerable. 'How very nice of him,' said the Duchess, still smiling, as Donnie trotted away. 'How awfully nice.' You cannot shake a royal Duchess either."