Ice-Cream War, An

Description: "An Ice-cream War" is William Boyd's hilarious bestselling novel of love and battle. 'We will all melt like ice-cream in the sun!' British soldier, East Africa, October 1914. As millions are slaughtered on the Western Front, a ridiculous and little-reported campaign is being waged in East Africa - a war they continued after the Armistice because no one told them to stop. Primarily a gripping story of the men and women swept up by the passions of love and battle, William Boyd's magnificently entertaining novel also elicits the cruel futility and tragedy of it all. "An Ice-cream War" will be loved by fans of "Any Human Heart" and "A Good Man in Africa", as well as readers of Ben Macintyre, Sebastian Faulks, Nick Hornby and Hilary Mantel. "Compulsively readable". ("Observer"). "He has a black-edged laughter of his own ...quite outstanding". ("Sunday Times"). William Boyd has received world-wide acclaim for his novels. They are: "A Good Man in Africa" (1981, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize), "An Ice Cream War" (1982, shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize and winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), "Stars and Bars" (1984), "The New Confessions" (1987), "Brazzaville Beach" (1990, winner of the McVitie Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize), "The Blue Afternoon" (1993, winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, 1995), "Armadillo" (1998), and "Any Human Heart" (2002, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet). He is also the author of a collection of screenplays and a memoir of his school days, "School Ties" (1985); and three collections of short stories: "On the Yankee Station" (1981), "The Destiny of Nathalie 'X'" (1995) and "Fascination" (2004). He also wrote the speculative memoir "Nat Tate: an American Artist" - the publication of which, in the spring of 1998, caused something of a stir on both sides of the Atlantic. A collection of his non-fiction writings, 1978-2004, entitled "Bamboo", was published in October 2005. His ninth novel, "Restless", was published in September 2006 (Costa Book Award, Novel of the Year 2006) and his tenth novel, "Ordinary Thunderstorms", published September 2009. His most recent novel is "Waiting For Sunrise" which published in February 2011.

Author Biography: William Boyd was born in Ghana in 1952, and brought up there and in Nigeria. He was educated at the universities of Nice, Glasgow and Oxford. He is the author of a number of acclaimed and hugely popular novels and three volumes of short stories, and the recipient of many prizes, including the Whitbread First Novel Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award. He has also scripted a number of films and tv series including Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy. He lives in Chelsea, London and in France.