"KRUGER'S GOLD: A novel of the Anglo-Boer War"
NOW AVAILABLE VIA KINDLE
'Pleased to anounce that the first of my books is now available via the Kindle platform.
It can be accessed here: http://amzn.to./r4ICEk
By publishing on the Kindle platform, it now enables readers to get a copy of KRUGER'S GOLD at a greatly reduced price, compared to that of the printed paper version.
Particularly welcome to would-be buyers who live in South Africa and Britain, where reader interest is likely highest. Previously, costs of snail-mail postage and monetary exchange rates drove up the cost of buying a copy of my book. Now via Kindle, it is available for one sixth the original price -- and delivered instantaneously online.
Already, the book has garnered another enthusiastic review:
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Book Review "Kruger's Gold: A novel of the
Anglo-Boer War" by Sidney Allinson.
"Quite simply a wonderful book"
Reviewer: R. Cox, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Sidney Allinson's books are surprises. They
can start off unassumingly and build up to rip snorting sagas of ceaseless
adventure. In his finest work yet, Allinson doesn't even start off slowly.
"Kruger's Gold" grips the reader at once and the pace never slows. As
I read this action tale of the struggle a century ago between South Africa's
Boers, and England and her "colonials," I was repeatedly struck with
the idea this would be and should be a wonderful movie. Allinson's experience
as a television producer may have given him that hot-shot cameraman's
"eye" or it could simply be that any good yarn so stirringly told
lends itself to theatre in the best sense.
On these pages, a segment of history that
was soon obscured by two ensuing, bloodier world wars leaps to life. It is really
the twilight of an era, with Europeans jostling for power and position and, in
this case in particular, South African gold Allinson fills in the historical
perspective while following a Canadian soldier and his colonial troops who,
late in the war, have been assigned to find the legendary government cache of
gold that departing Prime Minister Paul Kruger was said to have stashed before
leaving in 1900 for virtual exile in Europe.
Allinson writes sympathetically of the
brilliant Boer commandos fighting to retain their homeland and their way of
life. His story is not overly revisionist: the Boers have seized this land from
the native tribes, after all, and even the most principled among them want to
keep the blacks and "coloureds" in their place, lest their vast
numbers overwhelm the white settlers. Even through a more politically correct
prism, we must admire the self reliance of these men whose surprise tactics and
talented marksmanship enabled them to strike at the enemy, melt away into the
bush, and return to attack another day. Many if not most of the men have lost
wives and children to the war; yet, while they can be ruthless, they treat
surrendered prisoners with a decency and respect that arouses a sense of
nostalgia in the reader. Their English counterparts do as well with their own
prisoners, for the most part.
The story of the concentration camps where
stranded Boer families and prisoners were placed to wait out the war is not as
happy a one Allinson paints a grim picture of these horrors where women and
children and some men languished in filthy conditions with poor diets and
disease and death dogging every step. A few selfless medical workers do their
best, but there are no facilities and their supplies are woefully inadequate.
The camps were not England's finest legacy to the history texts.
The romances in the book provide a lusty
and pleasing counterpoint. Even the horses get to play a heart-warming role.
And throughout the book, Allinson has peppered the story with fascinating
historical minutiae, such as the Boer heroine not being allowed to play ragtime
music, then the rage, because it was produced by black performers.
Read this book at http://amzn.to/r4ICEk It is a treat. — R. Cox.
