SOLDIER BLUE

Paul Williams, paperback.

"When my parents decided to go to Africa in September of 1958, they didn't know they were stumbling into the beginnings of a civil war that would spiral into political madness, and end in economic ruin and poverty. They didn't know that their only son would be coerced into fighting in the war. Nor did they know that in the early hours of the new millennium, they would have to flee the Dark Continent, leaving their house, car, servant, bank account and forty six year old suntan.

No, in 1958 they believed the stale propaganda that was still being disseminated, albeit in an embarrassed way, by the British government - that the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (as it was then called) was a healthy animal, a thriving outpost of the “Commonwealth Empire."

A brilliant, captivating and deeply moving coming-of-age memoir set against the backdrop of the Rhodesian bush war of the 1970s. Paul Williams' writing sparkles with wit, irony and pathos as he explores the appalling truths of the battlefield, and the fragile world of romantic love.