EBOOK
About
In a country house in England a precocious teenage exile from revolutionary Russia sets down his adventures on paper, beginning with his first ball in St Petersburg and how he frees a huge African elephant from a cruel circus. But a hundred years later an American academic feels the boy may have invented the elephant as the only kind and uplifting being in dark times.
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Reviews
"(on previous work) There's no doubt that Pickering's experiences in Afghanistan have helped immeasurably when describing the detail of Malone and Fatima's journey. But it has also given him an insight to the country's people. His admiration and sympathy for an embattled but proud people is clear."
The Herald
"(on previous work) There's lots of violence, and factional fighting, and confusion, and a long trek through the mountains. The theme of The Wizard of Oz is never very far away, either. And when I said that the veil lifts about halfway through, that's not the only time it lifts. The good guys are just as bad as the bad guys, Pickering seems to be telling us. But the bad guys know stuff the good guys will never know; over there, they know all the best tricks."
The Spectator
"(on previous work) One may find it difficult to credit that anyone would risk their lives for something that seems unlikely to make a scrap of difference in such a brutalised place. Yet throughout the book the people of Congo are shown to love Western classical music and to respond to it intensely, so perhaps to question this is just another form of ingrained racism.
Even Xavier the warlord has Mozart on his iPod. Pickering's tale echoes earlier narratives such as Helen Of Troy and Conrad's Heart Of Darkness. All are tales of grand obsessions in which death is diminished by the epic scale of the settings and the single-mindedness of their protagonists."
Express