The African Queen

THE AFRICAN QUEEN

Short Summary:

"The African Queen" is the tale of two companions with different personalities who develop

an untrustworthy love affair as they travel together downriver in Africa around the start of World War I. They struggle against the climate, the river, the bugs, the Germans and, most of all, against each other. In the course of much misery, they develop love and respect for each other.

Detailed Summary:

In September 1914, the German occupying forces hold East Africa.

The story starts in a small village that is overlorded by a stuffy British missionary, Reverent Samuel Sayer and his spinster, prudish sister Rose Sayer, who is utterly devoted to her brother. Rose is also very naive and pious. She thinks, God would not permit a war between England and Germany or the whole world..

Some day, German troops marches into that village. Merciless, without any warning, these troops invade the village, they burn down the huts and the church. Livestock, poultry, pots and pans and foodstuffs even the portable chapel had been taken by the German soldiers.

Only the mission bungalow was spared. Samuel goes on praying the awful calamity of war which has descended upon the world would soon pass away, so that slaughter and destruction would cease and that when they had regained their sanity men would turn from war to universal peace. Because of this war they were cut off from all communications and the rest of the world. Samuel thinks the Germans responsible for the outbreak of the war and all the sufferings. Rose is helpless as her brother suffers a nervous breakdown. He realises that his life's work has been destroyed and instantly loses his mind. He dies very soon after that, while Rose weeps at his bedside. One day later the sharp sound of a steamboat whistle could be heard in the village. A gin-drinking, cigar-smoking man, called Charlie Allnutt, arrives. He is the owner of this old, 30-foot ramshackle steamer named "The African Queen". He supplies the village with mails and news.

Charlie offers Rose both to rescue her and escape from here and bury her brother's corpse. They have to use the old, ramshackle African Queen, since he has blasting gelatine, cylinders of oxygen and hydrogen as new cargo.

They have a dangerous and difficult escape route: They have to pass the large Central Africa lake at the end of the dang...

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...erested in. Actually he is married, but this was a long time ago and so he don't care about it. But he is also an realist and he thinks about his actions. The marriage with Rose is not only a love-marriage, he realises that he has no job

no money and no future without Rose.

Cecile Scott Forester

- curriculum vitae -

C.S. Forester was born in Cairo in 1899.

His father was stationed there as a government official.

He studied medicine at Guy's Hospital but he left Gey's

without getting doctor's degree. From that moment he began

to start he writing career. His first important success was the

novel "Payment Deferred". In 1932 Forester was offered a

Hollywood contract. Until 1939 he spent a lot of time in America.

During the war he entered the Ministry of Information and later

he went to the Royal Navy to collect materials for his book "The Ship".

Then he made a voyage to the Bering Sea to gather material for a

similar book on the United States Navy. During this trip he was stricken

with Arteriosclerosis, a disease with left him crippled. But he continued

to write and created his book "Captain Hornblower".

He died in 1966.