Ladysmith (novel)

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Ladysmith
First edition cover from 1999
Author Giles Foden
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Historical novel
Publisher Faber and Faber
Publication date 2 December 1999
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 336 pp (UK paperback edition) & 304 pp. (US hardback edition)
ISBN ISBN 0-571-19733-7 (UK first paperback edition) & ISBN 0-375-40920-3 (US hardback edition)
Preceded by The Last King of Scotland
Followed by Zanzibar

Ladysmith is Giles Foden’s second novel. It was published in 1999 by Faber and Faber.

[edit] Plot summary

The time is November 1899 through February 1900; the place is Ladysmith, a small railroad town in British Natal near its border with the Boer Republics. The Boers have surprised the world with an initial series of victories over the British army and have now laid siege to Ladysmith. As they shell the town from surrounding hills, people die, disease is rampant, structures collapse, starvation looms, and yet the British muddle through with an improvised cricket match whenever possible.

The setting of Giles Foden’s novel is historically accurate, and a number of historical figures appear as characters; for example, the Boers arrest a young reporter named Winston Churchill as he struggles to reach the besieged town, and an Indian lawyer-turned-medical volunteer named Mohandas K. Gandhi becomes more and more committed to his philosophy of active non violence.

Ladysmith by author Giles Foden (Faber and Faber, 2000)
Ladysmith by author Giles Foden (Faber and Faber, 2000)

The core of Ladysmith is a fictionalized version of a love story that Giles Foden found in the letters of his great-grandfather, who was a British soldier at Ladysmith. Bella, the Irish hotelkeeper's daughter, falls in love, first, with a British soldier; and later with a Portuguese barber, thus defying convention and rebelling against her father. The unlikely couple escapes in a balloon.

[edit] Release details