Indecent Exposure

Tom Sharpe's second South African novel and a brilliant follow- up to Riotous Assembly Once again the setting is Piemburgem, the deceptively peaceful- looking capital of Zululand, where Kommandant van Heerden, Konstabel Els and Luitenant Vekramp continue to terrorise true Englishman and even truer Zulus in their relentless search for a perfect South Africa. While that great Anglophile, Kommandant van Heerden, gropes his way towards attaining true 'Englishness' in the company of the eccentric Dornford Yates Club, Luitenant Verkramp, whose hatred of all things English is surpassed only by his fear of sex, sets in motion an experiment in mass chastity, with the help of the redoubtable lady psychiatrist Dr von Blimenstein, which has remarkable and quite unforeseen results. The Kommandant, hunting the fox in the Aardvark mountains, succumbs to the bizarre charms of Mrs Heathcote- Kilkoon, as Luitenant Verkramp's essays in counter- espionage backfire in the bird sanctuary. Once more, Konstabel Els, homicidal to the last, saves the day- or what's left of it- in one of the most savage hunts ever chronicled in fiction.