Follows the fortunes of several wildly different characters - including an expat farmer and a young English aristocrat - as they are swept up in the fighting in German East Africa during the First World War, their lives converging amid battle, betrayal, love, comedy and tragedy.
An Ice-Cream War was the debut novel of William Boyd who would go on to be recognized as 'the finest storyteller of his generation' (Sebastian Faulks). It follows the fortunes of several wildly different characters - including an expat farmer and a young English aristocrat - as they are swept up in the fighting in German East Africa during the First World War, their lives converging amid battle, betrayal, love, comedy and tragedy.
An Ice-cream War is William Boyd's hilarious bestselling novel of love and battle 'We will all melt like ice-cream in the sun!' British soldier, East Africa, October 1914 As millions are slaughtered on the Western Front, a ridiculous and little-reported campaign is being waged in East Africa - a war they continued after the Armistice because no one told them to stop. Primarily a gripping story of the men and women swept up by the passions of love and battle, William Boyd's magnificently entertaining novel also elicits the cruel futility and tragedy of it all. An Ice-cream War will be loved by fansof Any Human Heart and A Good Man in Africa, as well as readers of Ben Macintyre, SebastianFaulks, Nick Hornby and Hilary Mantel. 'Compulsively readable' Observer 'He has a black-edged laughter of his own . . . quite outstanding' Sunday Times WILLIAM BOYD has received world-wide acclaim for his novels.They are: A Good Man in Africa (1981, winner of the Whitbread Award and theSomerset Maugham Prize) An Ice Cream War (1982, shortlisted for the 1982 BookerPrize and winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Stars and Bars (1984), TheNew Confessions (1987), Brazzaville Beach (1990, winner of the McVitie Prizeand the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) The Blue Afternoon (1993, winner ofthe 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times BookAward for Fiction, 1995), Armadillo (1998) and Any Human Heart (2002, winner ofthe Prix Jean Monnet). He is also theauthor of a collection of screenplays and a memoir of his schooldays, SchoolTies (1985); and three collections of short stories: On the Yankee Station(1981), The Destiny of Nathalie 'X' (1995) and Fascination (2004). He alsowrote the speculative memoir of his schooldays, School Ties (1985); threecollections of short stories: On the Yankee Station (1981), The Destiny ofNathalie 'X' (1995) and Fascination (2004). He also wrote the speculativememoir Nat Tate: an American Artist -- the publication of which, in the springof 1998, caused something of a stir on both sides of the Atlantic. A collectionof his non-fiction writings, 1978-2004, entitled Bamboo, was published inOctober 2005. His ninth novel, Restless, was published in September 2006 (CostaBook Award, Novel of the Year 2006) and his tenth novel, OrdinaryThunderstorms, published September 2009. His most recent novel is Waiting ForSunrise which published in February 2011.