Book description
In 1935 Italy declared war on Abyssinia and Evelyn Waugh was sent to
Addis Ababa to cover the conflict. His acerbic account of the intrigue
and political machinations leading up to the crisis is coupled with
amusing descriptions of the often bizarre and seldom straightforward
life of a war correspondent rubbing shoulders with less-than-honest
officials, Arab spies, pyjama-wearing radicals and disgruntled
journalists. Witty, lucid and penetrating, Evelyn Waugh captures the
dilemmas and complexities of a feudal society caught up in
twentieth-century politics and confrontation. Evelyn Waugh was born in
Hampstead in 1903, second son of Arthur Waugh, publisher and literary
critic, and brother of Alec Waugh, the popular novelist. He was educated
at Lancing and Hertford College, Oxford, where he read Modern History.
In 1928 he published his first work, a life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
and his first novel,
Decline and Fall
, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies
(1930), Black Mischief
(1932), A Handful of Dust
(1934) and Scoop
(1938). Waugh travelled extensively and also wrote several travel
books, as well as a biography of Edmund Campion and Ronald Knox. Other
famous works include his Sword of Honour
trilogy, and Brideshead Revisited
(1945).
