A Sailor of Austria
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Product Description
For Lieutenant Otto Prohaska of the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Navy, life can be awkward to say the least. As a submarine captain of the largest land-locked empire in history, Otto faces a host of unlikely circumstances from petrol poisoning to exploding lavatories and an angry dromedary. Things scarcely improve on land where he finds himself the target of trigger - happy Turks and angry relatives with Medieval mindsets. All signs point to total collapse of the bloated empire he serves, but Otto refuses to abandoned the Habsburgs in their hour of need. With clever writing and a wry sense of irony, John Biggins shows us an unlikely empire on the wane and a well-meaning man caught on the brink of World War and the end of an era. Otto Prohaska speaks seven of the empire's eleven languages, but in a Navy hampered by nationalist sentiments and undermined by the very bureaucracy it defends, communication is an unlikely occurrence.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A welcome return for this darkly humourous novel of a Czech-Polish officer in the baroque and bizarrre dying days of the Hapsburg Empire, this gives a view into the world of a comic-opera country torn apart by the horrors of the First World War and the emerging nationalisms of the twentieth century that between them foreshadow the even worse nightmares of Holocaust and Total War that await. With remarkable, but never overbearing historical knowledge the author spins his tale through the first person recollections of Ottakar Prohaska, Maria Thierisen Ritter, officer and now Stateless Person in an old peoples' home in South Wales.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you like historical fiction like Bernard Cornwell novels or the Flashman books then you will like this too. Its a well written, interesting novel set in the Austo-Hungarian Royal and Imperial Navy of the First World War. If like me, you never realised that the Austrian Empire even had a Navy nevermind a submarine fleet you will find this fascinating!
I read this one first and now I am working my way through the others in the series. Its a great book, I am very impressed by the cover art work too.
I read this one first and now I am working my way through the others in the series. Its a great book, I am very impressed by the cover art work too.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Great to see this novel back in print after too long an absence. It is an unusual mix of dark humour, adventure, historical novel and romance, shedding light on a little known aspect of World War One and the near "comic opera" Austro-Hungarian empire. This novel is a treat for anybody who enjoys historical novels in the Flashman mould. It is by far the best in the series, proving once again that sometimes an author's ideas and imagination do not develop with time.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A wonderful story, some formatting errors in the Kindle edition
This is a great book, funny and (especially towards the end) sad. It's the story of Otto Prohaska, U-Boat captain of the Habsburg empire during World War 1. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Russell Phillips
Comic, tragic, fascinating, moving...
It is good to see this book, and the other three in Biggins' all-too-short series about Otto Prohaska, back in print. Read more
Published on 29 Feb 2008 by Iain S. Palin
Wonderfully ironic gentle humour - a real treat
Otto Prohaska, now aged over a hundred, sits in his Stateless Old Persons' home in Wales and recounts his life as an officer in the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian navy during... Read more
Published on 13 Jun 2007 by Tim62
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