Cupid in Africa

Book excerpt: Cupid in Africa is the life story of Bertram Greene, a young British gentleman, a poet, an artist, a musician, a wretched student and intellectual and a bitter disappointment to his father, honorable, upright and scrupulous Major Hugh Greene. In order to gain fathers respect Bertram enlists in the army. After doing his training in India he gets sent to North Africa, where he gets involved in very tough and bloody battles. During his time in combat Bertram is learning about himself a lot and he goes through a major change, becoming a proper man of war._x000D_ Percival Christopher Wren (1875 - 1941) was an English writer, mostly of adventure fiction. He is remembered best for Beau Geste, a much-filmed book of 1924, involving the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. This was one of 33 novels and short story collections that he wrote, mostly dealing with colonial soldiering in Africa. While his fictional accounts of life in the pre-1914 Foreign Legion are highly romanticized, his details of Legion uniforms, training, equipment and barrack room layout are generally accurate, which has led to unproven suggestions that Wren himself served with the legion._x000D_