New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc. (1932) dj. Hardcover first edition - Waugh's third novel, a black comedy set in Africa, openly racist in its use of the worst stereotypes of Africans, although the white colonizers don't come off much better - "Seth was black, but he had been to Oxford, and admired the ways of Western Civilization. He was sorry when his savage troops ate his father, but that was part of his coup d'Etat, and set him on the throne of Azania, the African island empire which was not unlike Abyssinia. Basil Seal had known, taken up, and dropped Seth at Oxford; when he read of Seth's accession, he took his mother's jewels and a check from his mistress, and sailed for Azania." Based in part of Waugh's experiences in Abyssinia, then the only independent sovereign nation in Africa (in his travel book, "'"Remote People" he described it as a a tangle of modernism and barbarity), this also was intended to satirize the situation in England, which was in a deep financial crisis, as well as social movements such as Marie Stope's campaign for birth control which was entwined with eugenics. While it was controversial at the time of its publication, most of the controversy was over its "indecency" and depiction of cannibalism - not his depiction of Africans. In fact the NY Times review in 1932 was headed "Hilarity in Africa" and called it a "brilliant comic-opera tale. . .. in fiction he is able to make his jokes broader, his wit subtler, give wider scope to his gift for creating astounding absurdities." Red, black and brown illustrated endpapers, small illustration on the title page. Map frontispiece. 312 pp.