A different world
|
It is good to see Biggins' four Otto Prohaska novels back in print. They are intensely readable, informative, and amazing in their ability to draw the reader into a now-dead but fascinating world. Prohaska is an officer in the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Navy and the other books deal with his career in the years before, and during, the First World War. This one takes us back to 1903, when as a naval cadet he serves aboard an antiquated vessel making a voyage of exploration and (hopefully) colonisation that takes it to many parts of the world.
The ship is in many ways a metaphor for the Empire itself - out-of-date and not quite coming to terms with the modern world, unrealistic in what people expect of it, and starting to come apart but nonetheless blending people from many nations in a common aim. Readers of before-the-mast sailing adventures will find more than enough to satisfy them here, while those who want to be taken into this lost world and a society whose basis and attitudes differ so much from our own will have no complaints.
The narration by the now very old Prohaska seeking to commit his experiences to record is wry, dry, witty, and affectionately respectful of a world which vanished for ever in the years of 1914-18.
|
|
|
United States | 
United Kingdom | 
Canada