Memoir of the Bobotes
Joyce Cary

Memoir of the Bobotes

Joyce Cary was 23 years old at the start of the Balkan War of 1912-1913. A one time art student in Edinburgh and Paris and newly down from Trinity College, Oxford he went through the war as a stretcher-bearer in the Red Cross. Shortly after his return, the possessor of the Montenegrin equivalent of the Military Cross, he wrote Memoir of the Bobotes without thought of publication. It is an extraordinarily vivid account of a forgotten war fought by peasants under primitive conditions - yet particularly fascinating today to readers with memories of later Balkan wars. It is both a moving and illuminating account of the war but it also offers a self-portrait of a young, upper-class Englishman - idealistic, sensitive, romantic -living in the belief that 'there would be no more wars'.

Book Details:

  • Author: Joyce Cary
  • Published Year: 1964
  • Rights Sold
    • UK: Weidenfeld
Joyce Cary

Joyce Cary

Joyce Cary was born in 1888 into an old Anglo-Irish family and educated at Clifton. He studied art, first in Edinburgh and then in Paris , before going up to Trinity College, Oxford, in 1909 to read law. On coming down he served as a Red Cross orderly in the Balkan War of 1912-13,the inspiration for Memoir of the Bobotes , before joining the Nigerian Political Service. He served in the Nigeria Regiment during the First World War, was wounded while fighting in the Cameroons, and returned to civil duty in Nigeria in 1917 as a district officer. His time in Africa provided the inspiration for h...
More about Joyce Cary