The Elevation of Audley Masterton

The Elevation of Audley Masterton Summer 1914. Determined to restore his career and regain the offer of a knighthood after an unfortunate mishap in London, Shakespearian actor-manager Audley Masterton embarks on a tour of the Empire, only to be wrecked on the Skeleton Coast of South-West Africa with a mere handful of survivors. Escaping German internment on a rusty train, he sets about welding them into a new troupe; whilst the endless permutations of young love and jealousy find their echoes in the plays themselves. And as they advance further into the interior, the tragic outcome of his own youthful amour many years ago in Zanzibar comes back to haunt him with ever greater intensity. Rescued from slave traders by an apparent chance encounter with an acquaintance from the past, they are led through the jungle to an Arab fortress and an engagement which is not at all what it seems. Masterton gets his elevation certainly, but not quite in the way he expects. *** Witty, compelling and humane, the novel explores the effects on the lives of the fifteen companions as they are drawn into a rich, complex and frightening confrontation between the Bard and Africa. *****