War for dessert
Zum Dessert Krieg (English original title: An Ice-Cream War ) is the German-language edition of the second novel by William Boyd , published in 1982 . The German translation by Hermann Stiehl was published in 1986 . Since 2012 this translation has been published under the new title Der Eiskrem-Krieg .
For Dessert War is a war novel, the characters of which are drawn into the events and effects of the East Africa front of the First World War . Its action period lies between June 6, 1914 and January 3, 1919. The protagonists are Temple Smith (an American farmer in British East Africa), Gabriel Cobb (officer in the British army), his brother Felix, Erich von Bishop (farmer in German - East Africa) and his wife Liesl.
The novel has elements of black comedy, the English social novel as well as the realistic war narrative. It comprises four parts - Before the War , The War , For Dessert War and After the War - of very different lengths as well as a prologue and an epilogue.
content
Before the war (June 6 to July 26, 1914)
The American Temple Smith runs a sisal farm in British East Africa , right on the border with the German East Africa colony . His neighbor is Erich von Bishop, whose wife Liesl is returning from a long stay in Germany.
In Kent in the English province, the family of retired Major Hamish Cobb is preparing for the wedding of their son Gabriel (27), an officer stationed in India , to Charis. The youngest son Felix (18), who wants to study in Oxford , has a penchant for enlightening bohemia and is therefore considered a slacker in the officer family, is also there. When Charis and Gabriel start their honeymoon in Trouville-sur-Mer , France , where it turns out to be a disappointing wedding night for Charis, war breaks out.
The war (August 9, 1914 to July 1, 1916)
Immediately after the outbreak of World War I , Erich von Bishop appears with the German invasion force on Temple's farm and drives him away. Temple sets about filing reparations claims with his insurance company in Nairobi . The insurance agent is shot dead attempting to inspect the damage and Temple joins the British Army.
Gabriel Cobb is deployed to Africa after a long and arduous journey, is barely there, seriously injured in the Battle of Tanga and is captured. Meanwhile his brother Felix tries to get by in the bohemian scene of his friend Holland and has to take a heavy blow when his sister abruptly rejects him. He's also having a hard time at home in Kent, because he is still rejected as a slacker. Finally, he has a lengthy affair with his sister-in-law Charis, which drives them both into serious conflicts of conscience and ultimately leads to Charis' suicide.
Gabriel befriends Bishop's wife Liesl in the prisoner hospital, who works as a nurse there and undergoes a personal maturation process in the course of the war. He watches her shower every night from a safe hiding place. Despite his word of honor as an officer, he also tries to get information about the course of the war and to pass it on.
Temple fights as a soldier of the British troops against the protection force for German East Africa under Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and has to watch the inadequate efforts of the mixed-up British troops and their stiff and inflexible officers to decisively beat the Germans. He also comes to his old farm and has to find out that despite promising to the contrary, Bishop has had his expensive sisal barking machine transported away.
For dessert war (January 21 to November 25, 1917)
Felix has now also committed himself to military service and has been relocated to Africa to look for his brother there, assuming that Gabriel was informed of the affair by letter from Charis. During the rainy season he spends several months on a section of the front cut off from any war but also from supplies, where he is exposed to hunger and deprivation without ever having "met a single enemy soldier". When he can finally resume his search for Gabriel in the stage and is pointed out to a certain one from Bishop, he comes across Temple Smith, who is also looking for von Bishop, "with whom he still has a chicken to pick".
Gabriel is caught as a nocturnal voyeur and arrested by the Germans as a spy . When his records are found, it is assumed that he knows about a mysterious secret company. With the help of Liesl, he escapes, and Bishop is assigned to pursue him with a group of local soldiers.
Temple and Felix are transferred to the front again, pull behind the fleeing Germans and come across Bishop's hospital and Liesl, from whom Felix learns to his great relief that Gabriel never received any letters. Felix and Temple decide to go after Bishop together. Von Bishop and his people track down Gabriel and kill him. Felix and Temple are late.
After the war (May 15 to December 9, 1918)
Felix is a Special Services Officer in Portuguese East Africa , where the Germans have since withdrawn, and is bored until he is injured with new grenade launchers and almost dies during an exercise. While recovering from his injury and partial blindness in Nairobi, he discovers the name of Bishops as one of the few surviving German officers on the news of the German surrender . He decides to kill him, travels to Dar-es-Salaam and finds at Bishop's bedside that he has just died of the rampant flu epidemic .
Themes and motifs
The historical background of the novel is one of the most remote fronts of the First World War, where German and British colonial troops faced each other. Boyd describes the British military leadership as characterized by arrogance and outdated ideals of the war, which lead to heavy losses of the troops, especially in the battle of Tanga, and repeatedly lead to incorrect assessments of the situation and wrong decisions in the further course of the war.
The war itself is for the most part a matter of waiting, dull boredom, eternal transport issues, while the actual brief combat operations for the individual soldier are completely incoherent and arbitrary. Cruelty alternates with absurd coincidences such as the historically documented incident involving a huge swarm of bees during the Battle of Tanga. “The soldiers die by mistake, from misunderstandings, coincidences and bee stings. But they die, and not exactly in appetizing pictures. "
With characters like the stupid officer Wheech-Browning, who spreads chaos wherever he appears, or the various war veterans of the Cobb family, Boyd personifies the grotesque aspects of a warlike catastrophe, just as irony in general is the keynote of the book, which is the realistic portrayal of the war - Wounding, death, privation and the uncertainties of families in Europe - seems all the more acute. “That's just the way war is. It causes endless inconvenience. "
A side theme of the novel is the fear of failure and the real failure of men in the face of strong women. Gabriel Cobb, on the other hand, represents the type of a new generation who tried to overcome the incrustations and social barriers of the late Victorian era . Only he and the women in the novel like his mother, Liesl von Bishop or Charis grow with their tasks.
The original English title An Ice-Cream War refers to the misconception - reproduced in a quotation from a letter in the prologue - that the war would end within a few months because the British soldiers would melt like ice in the sun.
Prices
- 1982 Nominated for the Booker Prize ( shortlist )
expenditure
- 1982 English original edition by Hamish Hamilton, London.
- 1986 German first edition, German by Hermann Stiehl, Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt. ISBN 3-498-00505-7 .
- 1989 Paperback, Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt. rororo 12501. ISBN 3-499-12501-3 .
- 2012 paperback with the title Der Eiskrem-Krieg , same translation, Berlin: Bloomsbury Taschenbuch. ISBN 978-3-8333-0819-2 .
Web links
- Review in the New York Times, February 27, 1983 (accessed March 8, 2009)
- Review in Die Zeit, December 12, 1986, accessed March 8, 2009