In the Blue Light of African Dreams - Hardcover

Watkins, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395551366 ISBN 13: 9780395551363

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1990

Synopsis

Charlie Halifax, a highly decorated American pilot, is banished to Africa in 1918 after trying to desert, and along with his mechanic Ivan, a former officer in the Russian cavalry, he begins to plan his escape

About this title

About the Author:

Paul Watkins was born in 1964. He is the son of Welsh parents and was educated at the Dragon School, at Eton and at Yale. His novels include Night Over Day Over Night, Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn, In the Blue Light of African Dreams, The Promise of Night, Archangel, The Story of My Disappearance and The Forger. He has also written about his experiences at public school, in Stand Before Your God. He was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1992 and 1996, and won the Winifred Holtby Prize for Best Regional Novel of the Year in 1996. He lives in the USA.

From Publishers Weekly:

An aviator mired in the Foreign Legion stays alive by dreaming the impossible in this exquisitely understated adventure. Having fled his Pennsylvania mining town, Charlie Halifax wins the Croix de Guerre flying in France's Lafayette Escadrille in WW I. After an injury, he tries to desert, is caught and sent to serve 20 years in the Foreign Legion. In Morocco, he flies for the greedy and vainglorious Capt. Serailler, who sells rifles to the Arabs even as he fights them. Halifax, holding on to his sanity with dreams of being the first aviator to fly the Atlantic, wins freedom--and a large sum of money--for himself and his flight mechanic (a former Russian aristocrat) by threatening to reveal Serailler's gun-running to a military investigator. Back in France with the mechanic, Halifax is confronted by the investigator, who tries to blackmail him with the promise of an article about his desertion. The irony is one of many for Halifax, who already lives with the memory of his brother's accidental death and nightmares about burning planes. But his life is also a metaphor for light that blinds, and Watkins ( Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn ) portrays it with deft, often lyrical prose, culminating in a beautifully imagined ending.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0395551366
• ISBN 13: 9780395551363
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 310