Antrobus Complete Author:Lawrence Durrell How the diplomatic corps of the British Foreign Service, as portrayed in the loosely connected sketches collected in this omnibus volume, managed to survive until now is one of those mysteries before which the mind boggles. — Featuring amiable, deadpan loopy Antrobus as narrator and prototype ("we dips," he says in all innocence of hims... more »elf and his colleagues), these tales of comic woe, small disasters, goofs, gaffes and misadventures from the ridiculous to the absurd depict the vaudeville of a government bureaucracy.
How, for example, the dips could bring themselves to accept an invitation from the Kurdish Embassy to a circumcision (smelling salts, stiff upper lip, stiff drink and sheer courage) is still not fully clear. Durrell's aim is to amuse while he instructs, and he succeeds with unfailing good humor.« less