GUNBEARER - Part Two

About the Book

A Yao tribesman,Sidi Mubarak Mumbai,trekked for many years with legendary British explorers on dangerous safaris into the Dark Continent-these two books deal with his adventures as Captain John Hanning Speke´s gunbearer in a unigue diary of East Africa´s early history. It is a candid seeking of what was not lost-an unprejudiced counterpoint to the often evasive personal reports constructed by European travelers of the Victorian era, In this volume, GUNBEARER-Part Two, Mumbai reports upon Speke´s second and final safari,in company with Captain James Augustus Grant, on the trek from Zanzibar to Buganda, and via the Nile to Cairo.

These two volumes give a unique evocation of what it was like to safari in Africa in the mid-19th Century. The author´s "voice" allows us to saturate ourselves in the colors, textures, odors, sounds, and sensations of treks through wildest Africa, transporting the reader to a long-vanished world. The novel tries to do justice to a long forgotten historical pair of figures, one being the explorer, Speke, whose untimely death and rivalry with the more famous Burton cheated him of almost all credit for his incredible exploits. But the second character you won´t soon forget is the narrator,Sidi Mubarak Mumbai, better known as "Bombay", whose vocabulary and viewpoint are quite unique to English literature. These are two epical journeys... to suffer and travel with the Captains and their sad little companion creates a haunting effect. As a cautionary tale for our own lives, GUNBEARER presents us with a message that we may be powerless to adapt to the desperate and trivial vanities in our personal lives.It is the hardest lesson of all to learn.Jan Merlin has presented the story in the form of a masterpiece of literature.

About the Author

Jan Merlin was born and raised in New York City. At the outset of WW II, he enlisted in the US Navy to serve as torpedoman aboard destroyers in the North Atlantic and South Pacific fleets, accumulating ten battle stars before entering Japan with the first Occupation Force group. Upon returning to civilian life, he enrolled in the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater and made his Broadway debut in MISTER ROBERTS. A twice nominated Emmy award winning writer, his professional acting career includes being starred or featured in numerous plays, several hundred live and filmed televison appearances, and more than thirty motion picture films made in the United States and abroad.