Cupid in Africa

by P. C. Wren

First published 1920

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2.5(5)

Bertram Greene is an intellectual and artistic young man whose family and social circle regard him as impractical and unmanly. Military service in East Africa during the First World War removes him from familiar judgements and subjects him to physical hardship, danger and the confused loyalties of colonial campaigning. Love and war together force him to discover capacities that neither he nor those around him had recognised.

The subtitle’s ‘baking’ describes the making of Bertram under pressure. Wren combines comic social observation with campaign fiction, showing how military institutions can be brutal and absurd while still creating intense fellowship. The East African setting also reveals the logistical strain, disease and distance of a theatre often overshadowed by the Western Front.