Shout at the Devil

German East Africa before the First World War. American adventurer Flynn O’Flynn and Englishman Sebastian Oldsmith become partners in ivory poaching along the Rufiji River and make an enemy of German administrator Herman Fleischer. The wartime action draws on the East African campaign and the German cruiser operating from the Rufiji Delta, where naval power depended upon rivers, ports and local troops.

When war reaches East Africa, their private feud becomes part of the regional campaign between German and British forces. Personal revenge, naval action and guerrilla warfare connect the pre-war frontier economy to the wider conflict. The men’s comic rivalry becomes darker when imperial war legitimises reprisals and transforms private poachers into irregular participants in a global conflict.