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  • Published: 24 September 2014
  • ISBN: 9780241970751
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $22.99

An Ice-cream War




William Boyd's sparkling debut novel on the grimly comic side of war, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.

'What do you think would happen if I shot an elephant in the balls?'
'I think it would hurt a great deal.'

Millions die on the Western Front but in East Africa a quite different war is being waged - one with little point and which is so ignored that it will carry on after the Armistice because no one bothers to tell both sides to stop.

As the conflict sweeps up natives and colonials, so those left at home and those fighting abroad find themselves unable to escape the tide of history bearing down on them.

  • Published: 24 September 2014
  • ISBN: 9780241970751
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

William Boyd

William Boyd is the author of one work of non-fiction, three collections of short stories and thirteen novels, including the bestselling historical spy thriller Restless – winner of the Costa Novel of the Year – and Any Human Heart, in which the character of Ian Fleming features. Among his other awards are the Whitbread First Novel Prize, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Jean Monnet. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2005, he was awarded the CBE.

Born in Ghana in 1952, William Boyd spent much of his early life in West Africa. He now divides his time between the south-west of France and Chelsea, where he lives a stone’s throw from James Bond’s London address.

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