The African Queen

First published in 1935, The African Queen is the story of Charlie Allnut & Rose Sayer, a disheveled trader & an English spinster missionary, who are thrown together when World War I reaches the heart of the African jungle. Fighting time, heat, malaria, & bullets, they escape on a rickety steamboat, where they fall in love & hatch an outrageous military plan of their own. The story was immortalized in the 1951 film starring Katharine Hepburn & Humphrey Bogart. There is renewed interest in C. S. Forester's work in the wake of the tremendously successful repackaging of his beloved Horatio Hornblower novels. The African Queen is packed with vintage Forester drama -- unrelenting suspense, reckless heroism, impromptu military maneuvers, leaky boats, near-death experiences -- & a good old-fashioned love story to boot.