Yet, the story was fun, with Forester turning the plot into both an adventure of good versus evil and a racy romance starring the protagonists. Forester employs simplistic language, and role of both men and women is indicative of the era in which he wrote.

Even though it was three hundred pages in length, they were short pages, and the novel read fast. Charlie and Rose share a 'honeymoon,' and I could envision Bogart and Hepburn here as I quickly read through to find a resolution. The boat breaks down and the couple has to repair it many times over, not before falling in love while in close quarters. The plot comes with many pitfalls, mainly that the African Queen is ill suited for much more than lazy river travel. Guiding Allnuts's small steamer the African Queen over the waterfalls of the Ulanga River to a Lake, most likely Victoria, they will torpedo the German fighter Konigin Luise and gain superiority for the British. After burying Samuel, Rose and Charlie concoct a plan to avenge his death. Immediately help arrives in the form of cockney mechanic Charlie Allnut who had been working for the Belgians in Nigasi. Germans fighting the British for control of the interior of the territory murder her brother Samuel.

Rose Sayers is deep in the African Congo when World War I arrives on the continent. I had been exposed to the movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn many times because it is one of my mother's favorite movies, but had never read the 1935 classic until now. After typing classic romance into lists one of the books offered was The African Queen by C. One square is read a classic romance and initially I was thrown for a loss because I do not even read contemporary romance as a genre. For the first time in 2017 I participated in bingo in the group catching up on classics.

The African Queen by C.S. Forester