A Rude Awakening

The year is 1946, and the place Sumatra, British and Dutch forces, having just finished one war, find themselves about to be involved in another - this time with Indonesian guerrillas. Trapped in the middle is Horatio Stubbs, a basically decent young man who has known little in his life but killing and the organized boredom of war. He has only 4 more days of active service left before he will be shipped home, and there is real doubt whether he will survive them. Military occupations, as one character observes, are depraved times, when injuries of all kinds cannot be avoided and injuries and casual depravities abound here. Death breaks into every pleasure, every ceremony, from an idyllic crocodile hunt to a military funeral for murdered Dutch friends. But if the situation isn't bad enough already, Stubbs can be counted on to make it worse. He loved unwisely, his epitaph might read, and unwell. And yet he does love in his uncertain way, and this book is also a love story between Stubbs and Margey, the Chinese mistress he considers marrying as time runs out. For him, and for everyone else he comes in contact with, the awakening into an unbrave new world will prove a rude one.