Book description
Mandoa is a small African state: at its head a Virgin Princess,
conceiving (immaculately) further princesses. The old traditions remain
undisturbed until Mandoa's Lord High Chamberlain, Safi Tala, visits
Addis Ababa. There he discovers baths and cocktail shakers, motor cars
and cutlery from Sheffield, telephones and handkerchiefs. In short, he
has seen an apocalyptic vision - a new heaven and a new earth. Meanwhile
in England it is 1931. Maurice Durrant, youngest director of Prince's
Tours Limited, has won North Donnington for the Conservatives. His
socialist brother Bill is unemployed and their friend Jean Stanbury
loses her job on The Byeword, a radical weekly paper. How all three, and
others too, find themselves in Mandoa for the wedding of the Royal
Princess to her Arch-archbishop is hilariously told in this wonderful
satirical novel, first published in 1933. Winifred Holtby (1898-1935),
journalist, critic, feminist, pacifist and author won the James Tait
Black Memorial prize with South Riding, her last novel.
