The War for Africa. Twelve Months That Transformed a Continent

(Gibraltar: Ashanti, 1990) 187480012X. 8vo; original brown boards, lettered in white on spine; laminated pictorial dustwrapper; endpaper maps; pp. viii + 403, incl. index; photographic plates (largely in full colour); maps and monochrome photographs in text. Earlier owner's tape repairs to edges of dustwrapper; boards slightly shelf-rubbed; merest trace of foxing to edges. Very good condition. "The reader will learn what it is like to encounter an advanced Soviet MiG fighter in a French Mirage warplane 30,000 feet above the forests of Africa; what emotions grip a reconnaissance commando lying unseen inside Cuban lines within feet of enemy soldiers; how it feels in an armoured car to face a Soviet T-55 tank at just 30 feet in burning bush and swirling dust and smoke. This is, however, far more than just an account of men in battle. Woven through are details of the political background to the conflict and the diplomatic initiatives which governed the lives and deaths of young Cuban, South African and Angolan men at the front. It is, all in all, a story of African fighting on an unprecedented scale, the international intrigue spanning several continents, and the new opportunities it opened up for democracy to 100 million people in five countries. It is a factual account which makes existing novels about derring-do in Africa seem unimaginative." .