The Devil's Oasis: A Novel [Hardcover]

Bartle Bull (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 9, 2001

All the treacherous intrigue of cosmopolitan Cairo and fiery drama of Rommel’s desert war in Africa continue the stirring historical adventure of the masterly Bartle Bull’s two previous novels, The White Rhino Hotel and A Cafe on the Nile. It is now 1942, and Nazi Germany stands at the height of its power. In North Africa the brilliant general Rommel’s panzers threaten the Suez Canal, the Middle East’s oil fields, and the trade route to Asia, but to win Egypt Rommel must first take the port of Tobruk and destroy the British fortress of Bir Hakeim. There, against the massive force of Rommel’s Afrika Korps, a young English hussar named Wellington Rider fights beside the French Foreign Legion. Wellington’s father, the professional hunter Anton Rider, is now operating as a desert commando and is engaged in the obliteration of Nazi air bases and petrol dumps. Not only has Anton’s old friend Ernst von Decken, a German soldier of fortune, meanwhile become the enemy, but also Anton’s estranged wife has entered into an affair with a Frenchman who supports Rommel’s campaign. Alliances shift, loyalties deceive, espionage thrives, and peril lies as much in the dark corners of Cairo as it does in the desert night. “...after three volumes of nonstop action, eroticism and intrigue, we still care about what happens to ... Mr. Bull’s extravagant cast.”—Richard Bernstein, New York Times “A World War II page-turner that’s part Masterpiece Theatre, part Raiders of the Lost Ark, part Casablanca.”—Washington Post

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

HThe dashing series that began with The White Rhino Hotel and continued with A Caf‚ on the Nile is moving its larger-than-life cast of exiles in 20th-century North Africa further ahead in time with each book. Still at the center of this latest installment is the exotic Goan dwarf Olivio Alavedo, with his circle of English friends, his beautiful children and his long-nurtured dreams of vengeance on those who have slighted him. The dashing Anton Rider is, as always, on the outs with his lovely and plucky wife, Gwenn, last seen nursing tribesmen mown down by Mussolini's troops in Eritrea. Now it's 1939, and war is about to engulf Cairo and the whole of North Africa, pitting Rider's old buddy, the brutally macho Ernst von Decken, against those accursed Englanders. Gwenn and Anton's eldest son, Wellington, insists on joining the army; what else can a chap do? Once again Gwenn has chosen the wrong lover, a terminally corrupt French fence-sitter, but all that is soon swept aside as the magnetic General Rommel and his Afrika Korps roar in to seize the Suez Canal. Yes, there's a role for wily old desert hand Anton, too, in harassing the German supply lines. It's an all-out, gung-ho war adventure, with much of the period glamour of The English Patient, but not a spot of psychological subtlety. The battle scenes are grimly garish, the plentiful suffering is endured in appropriate stiff-upper-lip silence. Exotic adventure fiction doesn't come much better and there's obviously a fourth chapter waiting in the wings. (Apr.)Forecast: A 30,000-copy first printing and a $30,000 ad/promo budget attest to the publisher's well-warranted faith in this series. Strong word of mouth from those who have enjoyed previous installments, plus some admiring reviews, should bring in new devotees of black-and-white wartime derring-do.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

All the colorful characters from Bull's A Caf on the Nile are back in his latest saga of war and intrigue in the caf s and nightclubs of Cairo and the harsh surrounding desert. There's Olivio Alavedo, worldly dwarf owner of the Cataract Caf ; old Africa hands Anton Rider and Ernst von Decken and their respective wives; surgeon Gwen Rider, glamorous American heiress Harriet von Decken, and their children; dashing soldier Wellington Rider; and exotically beautiful Saffron Alavedo. As General Rommel and his Afrika corps push their way across the Sahara, the ever-present danger and intrigue heightens in Cairo, pitting former friends against one another and forcing them to make difficult choices. Occasionally, the rapid shifting among the interwoven stories breaks the reader's emotional connection with the characters, but the brilliantly rendered description of a desert war among colonial powers more than makes up for for this shortcoming. Highly recommended. Cynthia Johnson, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, MA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 340 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; 1ST edition (April 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786708441
• ISBN-13: 978-0786708444
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,821,937 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Desert Fox meets the Great White Hunter, July 1, 2001

By 

Smallchief - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Devil's Oasis: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is the third in the series of adventure tales centering on Anton Rider, a gypsy-raised Brit who makes a living taking sports on safari. He has two upright sons and a separated wife, Gwenn, who has a terminal addiction to lovers who are losers. His friends include a likeable, devious and over-sexed dwarf, a German soldier with one foot, and an ancient Englishman. All these exotic characters are found in exotic locales along the Nile in 1939-1942 as Rommel advances toward Egypt and the British fight desperately to halt him. This, of course, involves Anton, who always finds trouble, and his military-age son Wellington. Gwenn is keeping company with a detestable Frenchman; the dwarf is calculating how he can get even richer with the war The greatest part of the book, especially toward the end, is devoted to war in the desert. The descriptions of the war are a little confusing. More explanation as to why, for example, the Foreign Legion is clinging so desperately to a particular patch of sand would be useful. Courage abounds in this novel; fear is not so evident -- and more would be welcome in a dramatic sense. Likewise, the hardships of heat and thirst in the desert don't seem to be exploited as effectively as they could be. But this is a good adventure tale, better written than most, and I look forward to the next book in the series.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome tale of Adventure!, April 3, 2002

By 

"lawyerboy1533" (Philly) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Devil's Oasis: A Novel (Hardcover)

Liked this even better than WRH. Just great adventure writing, set in North Africa. One of the best novels I've ever read. Combines action with romantic setting and atomosphere. Extremely well crafted and written.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Once more into the breach with Anton, Olivio and the gang, July 3, 2005

By 

Stuart W. Mirsky "swm" (New York, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Devil's Oasis: A Novel (Paperback)

Third in a series, this book takes Bartle Bull's motley assortment of African adventurers to the battlefields of North Africa in the early days of World War II. The earlier two books were great tales but suffered from a certain disappointing similarity and a jumpiness of narrative which took us back and forth among the different characters and various sub-plots. This time, though, things are a bit different. There are no battles in the bush or safaris except for a brief moment early on when white hunter and protagonist, Anton Rider, is wrapping one up, just before lighting out for Cairo to woo back his estranged wife Gwen, who has relocated there after attending medical school and becoming a physician.

On arrival in Cairo, Rider finds Gwen playing mistress to a slippery French archeologist and unwilling to reconcile with him because of his adventurous ways. Meanwhile his grown son, Wellington, and nearly grown son, Denby, are keen to sign up to fight the Jerries and Eyeties in the newly developing war, causing still another rift between Gwen and Anton.

Their proper British friend, the somewhat incompetent Lord Adam Penfold, rounds out this little group which is again bound together by their common friendship with, and devotion to, the Goan dwarf Olivo Fonseca Alavedo, the very kinky and always scheming capitalist miser with the heart of gold who keeps them all in the chips despite their unworldly ways. Olivio has his family of five beautiful daughters by his off-stage African wife (for some reason, throughout all the trials and tribulations of this group, she never makes an appearance) and his one dwarf son (the spitting image of his dad . . . though why he is the only one to inherit dwarfism while his daughters are all perfect specimens is never addressed or explained). Their old friendly enemy, Ernst von Decken is there, too. He's high tailing it to Rommel in North Africa to salve the pain of having been on the losing German side in East Africa during World War I. This time, relying on a peg leg to replace a foot he lost in the prior book, A Cafe on the Nile, he is quickly inducted into Rommel's inner circle and ready to beat the "Englanders" at last.

Anton, of course, is keen to do his duty for a Britain he left as a lad of 18 and has not seen since, even as Wellington, born and raised in Africa, enlists to do his. Gwen, rather annoyed by it all, flees Cairo for Alexandria to do her duty there caring for the wounded in the overcrowded hospitals, while Olivio has uncovered a secret on one of his landholdings that brings him into conflict with a certain French archeologist, as well as the Egyptian authorities. While Anton and Wellington are off blasting Eyties and Jerries, Olivio must outwit the man who is out to steal what he has found and who will stop at nothing, including assassination, to get his way.

As before, we are treated to a generous helping of sexual coupling, though it's less off the beaten path this time than in the prior books, as Wellington falls for Olivio's surviving eldest daughter, Saffron, and Anton cavorts with Ernst's American wife who has paused to dally a bit in Egypt on her way home to the states in the wake of Ernst's desertion of her for the glories of a dreamed of German victory. Anton leads his long range desert reconnaisance unit deep into Libya, enemy territory controlled by the Italians and Rommel, while Wellington takes his stand at a little known oasis on the road to Tobruk which Rommel must take if he's to move on and seize Alexandria, Egypt and all the rest of the oil rich Middle East.

As before, there's lots of action and good fun for those who want to lose themselves in a 1940's style adventure set in the exotic locale of North Africa. Bull does a marvelous job of conjuring up the world though I think, this time, he was a little too specific in the technical details as he lists the various vehicles on the two sides interminably and has Penfold continue to read newspaper headlines giving us the broader events of the day. Bull notes in his afterword that he did quite a bit of research in the old newspapers and, through Penfold, he seems keen to show us how much he took away.

The downside in this tale, though, remains the characters. While sharply drawn and generally interesting, they have no real depth and never seem to show any growth. Anton is still the heroic hunter cum adventurer, aphrodisiac to the ladies but a fish out of water with his own wife, Gwen. Lord Penfold is still the dull, impractical and sincere British aristocrat and Olivio is still the consumate schemer. Ernst remains the somewhat honorable schemer and lout he has always been, despite the losses he has taken including the missing foot.

The Goan dwarf, Olivio, still takes his hits but, as always, knows how to hit back in a remarkably brutal way, though his brutality is surprisingly muted this time out compared to what we got in the first two books. Despite the deep losses he sustains in his battle of wits with his new enemy, he seems surprisingly unmoved by it all, thriving, rather, on the vengeance he is able to conceive and implement despite the loss of some of those who are closest to him. He's been blown up and nearly burned to death many times before, of course, and given the health problems Bull tells us beset him, it's hard to imagine that he's still alive, still scheming and still taking revenge after it all. But this story is not meant to be realistic. It's a fantastic world of adventure masquerading as reality and in that it does its job. If you want to lose yourself in a fast paced tale of adventure in a far off time and place, among strange and quaintly alien peoples, then this book is right up your alley. I generally like my historical adventures set a bit further back in time, myself, but as an author of one of these (The King of Vinland's Saga), I respect a good job when I see it. And Bartle Bull has written an adventure worth losing oneself in. I lost myself for a couple of days, reading it right through to the end without a break. And that's what it's all about after all.

Stuart W. Mirsky