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  • Location: Africa, Tanzania, African Great Lakes

The African Queen

The African Queen

Why a Booktrail?

1914: The film of this famous love and adventure story which starred Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart became one of the most popular films ever made.

  • ISBN: 978-0753820797
  • Genre: Fiction, Historical

What you need to know before your trail

As World War I reaches the heart of the African jungle, Charlie Allnutt and Rose Sayer, a dishevelled trader and an English spinster missionary, find themselves thrown together by circumstance. Fighting time, heat, malaria, and bullets, they make their escape on the rickety steamboat The African Queen…and hatch their own outrageous military plan.

Travel Guide

Tanzania – The Great Lakes region

The setting of the book is German East Africa which was a German colony in the African Great Lakes Region, which included present-day Burundi, Rwanda, and the mainland part of Tanzania. German East Africa’s area was nearly three times the area of present-day Germany and double the are of metropolitan German then, before they lost lands in the two world wars.

The colony was organized when the German military was asked in the late 1880s to put down a revolt against the activities of the German East African company. It ended with Germany’s defeat in WW1.

Samuel is an Anglican missionary in German colonized Tanganyika. WW1 has recently begun and the German military commander of the area has conscripted all the natives.

A Cockney man named Allnutt arrives in the village from the African Queen, a steam-powered launch owned by a Belgian mining company. It’s sailing along the Ulanga River.

The boat makes it way to the fictional Lake Wittelsback into which the Ulanga feeds as this is the German defense against a British attack.

Booktrail Boarding Pass: The African Queen

Destination :  Africa, Great African Lakes, Tanzania  Author/Guide: C. S. Forester  Departure Time:1914

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