Grab Instantly A Good Man In Africa Designed By William Boyd Presented As Ebook

second book club book turned up trumps, thanks to my fellow member for recommending this to the group.


The folly of imperial Africa is laid bare, The personality of diplomatic relationships exposed, Power and lust collide. All told through the eyes of an imperfect Englishman struggling to make a name for himself,

At times funny, shocking, intriguing or all at once, A page turner with a good story that moves cleverly between time periods,

Will read more of Boyd now, A good slapstick comedy full of unlikable characters, See the sitelinkdescription for details, I loved this book. Boyd succeeds in so many phases, Before breaking down the successful elements of this impressive work, let's first get some housekeeping out of the way.


The story features British diplomat Morgan Leafy who is assigned to the British Embassy in the African republic of Kinjanja.
Over the Christmas holiday and days prior to an important national election, Leafy become embroiled in a series of absurd and curious scenarios.
He seems to be a lightening rod for bad luck and selfinflicted chaos, He drinks too much. He is overly lustful. He also has the worst possible luck,

Boyd sends Leafy on quixotic errands, Rather than finding solutions, Leafy seems to compound the problems with his valiant efforts, He is bright and resourceful, Despite all his best intentions and solutions, like a man struggling in quicksand, he only sink deeper into his troubled pit.
Gonorrhea, illfated love affairs, political intrigue, lighteninginduced death, revolutionary uprisings are some of the events that envelop poor Leafy.


Now to the accolades,

Character Development:
Leafy is a brilliant and convincing character, We get to know him intimately, We see all his flaws and virtues, He is someone we can cheer for despite his caddish behavior, We laugh at his exploits and

worry as he faces setback after setback, Leafy's boss Fanshawe, Fanshawe's wife Chloe, Fanshawe's daughter Priscilla, the aspiring and corrupt professorturnedpolitician Adekunle, Adekunle's Bristishborn wife Celia, and the incorruptible Dr.
Murray are brilliantly developed in Boyd's extensive cast, There are no caricatures to be found, Boyd deals in deep, credible and complex personas, His characters are consistent throughout, Despite numerous scenes and crises, the character never break character or lose their originality,

Plot:
The plot is tight, Boyd starts near the end, He then rolls back a few months in order to show how Leafy and company arrive at their current predicaments.
This technique is effective and executed brilliantly, The back stories are coherent and unexpected, We learn that Priscilla and Leafy had a shortlived romance, When we understand why the relationship fractured, the reason is shocking and delightfully conceived and described, Leafy's series of unfortunate events are spectacular, Boyd devises ingenious ways to explain how these events came to be, The action never seems forced or exaggerated, Boyd also never loses track of details that so often trips up lesser writers who dare to dream up a multitude of intertwining story lines.


Wit:
Leafy is quick on his feet and has a sharp wit, but that is not the primary source of the humor of "A Good Man".
Leafy is constantly contending with stressful events, While doing his best to deal with these situations, he finds himself caught in embarrassing acts at the worst time again and again.
On a romantic fishing outing with Priscilla, the mood is broken when they land a monster fish, Leafy has to subdue the wriggling monster and ultimately smash its head in with a rock, These fateful acts of odd luck are constantly following our hero Leafy,

History and Culture:
The world of the British diplomat is explained to the reader, We learn the plitics, agenda, tactics, and career path of these expats, The relationship between Leafy and Fanshawe is intriguing, Leafy must abide by the many whims of his boss, including some outside the box assignments, We learn of the politics and foreign influence in an oilrich African nation, and how favored politicians leverage these connections.
We learn about the corruption, the military foil to the political leadership, and the potential for riotous citizens in these African nations.
Boyd spent time in Africa, and the scenes he describe seem to be taken from his life experience.
We are the richer with his sharing his proprietary knowledge,

Style and Writing:
Boyd is a master of the language, His sentences are concise, his phrasing is impeccable, and his story is told without the words getting in the way.
There are many great storytellers who lack the vocabulary, the restraint, and the skill, but can still deliver an exciting story.
Boyd achieves the unique feat of great storytelling without flawed language,

Great Beginning, Profound and WellCrafted Conclusion:
As the pages wind down, it seems that "A Good Man" is headed for a nonending ending.
There is too much happening and too few pages to close the book with a neat finale, Wrong! Boyd nails it. Only on the last few pages does the title become clear, Boyd waits, waits, waits to deliver his message, When he finally does, it is all the more powerful due to his patience, He does not pound the reader over the head, but he makes his point and it is clear and powerful.


A great book in so many ways, The substar rating is a complete shocker, After reading "A Good Man" and "Any Human Heart", Boyd has elevated to one of my favorite authors.


Not a likeable character in sight and had no desire to find out what happened in the end, but ploughed on nonetheless.
A damn shame there isnt a,/. Ill give Boyd the benefit of the doubt, Completely politically incorrect and savagely funny, An antidote to the neurotic political correctness of the modern day, By invoking a particular type of erudite British humour, William Boyd and his hero Morgan Leafy are following in the footsteps of Kingsley Amis and Jim Dixon.
This novel is a delightful satire of the British pretensions to influence in Africa, Anyone with a name like Morgan Leafy is bound to have troubles, His career has wandered onto a jungle path and got lost, He's freckled, balding, going to fat, Within the Foreign Office, he's a secondstringer if ever there was one: not Oxbridge, not connected to the right people or any people, for that matter and stuck in a provincial backwater in west Africa as secondincommand to an abouttoretire hasbeen diplomat who spent his entire career in the Orient until, presumably because of his failing diplomatic powers or some unspoken slipup, he's also shunted off to this provincial post.
He and his awful wife can't fathom Africa, even a little, But then their daughter, disappointed in love, comes out, Maybe Leafy's prospects are looking up, If she isn't exactly a beauty and her head is as empty as they come, Priscilla may be the answer to Leafy's problems: she's got the connections and the social graces he so clearly lacks.
BUT

Morgan Leafy is one of those people everything happens to, Part of the charm of this novel is that all but the luckiest of us have been in a position where we've had to smile and metaphorically curtsy to people we can easily and cheerfully imagine being run down by a mad bull elephant or to whom we shout in our imaginations only, of course very rude words.
If Morgan isn't the nicest bloke on the block, he's also no worse than many, but he's in that position between having responsibility he cannot shirk and not having any power to direct what he does or for that matter, what anyone else does.
Whatever problem he solves turns out to need a different solution from the one he's come up with.
That's why disposing of Innocence the dead servant poses such an insoluble problem,

Although I'd say I'm not like that, I got a lot of vicarious enjoyment from Morgan's sotto voce expressions of bile and blind anger at the hand he's been dealt.
The novel has a somewhat convoluted plot, but then isn't that like real life And in the end, his enemy turns out to be the one person he admires and respects.
.