Content levels
Trigger warnings
Not yet taggedPositive tags
Not yet taggedTropes
Not yet taggedThemes
Not yet taggedSynopsis
The ebullient `average-man' hero of The Hand-Reared Boy is now a year older. He is on excellent form when his regiment is despatched overseas to India to become part of the unforgettable Forgotten Army, were heat and dust are in conflict with the sexual urges of the young soldiers. The humour suffusing the novel - and this is a very funny novel - is particularly evident in the dialogue of the troops and in their various riotous sexual escapades with whores, ponces and gobble-wallahs. It stems from the impulse to show things 'as they were' in the Other Ranks in India and Burma during those far-off days of the Forties and of the campaigns against the Japanese, and to recreate it exactly as it was, whether heroic, bawdy or downright bloody unspeakable. The East may be timeless, but the British soldier in India has certainly changed since Kipling's day.