User:Ponsaccl/Stephen Lister

Stephen Lister

Author of "Hail Bolonia", and of many more (please add).

Hail Bolonia came out in 1948, by publisher Peter Davies of London (London: Peter Davies)

I read and still own and love "Hail Bolonia" by Stephen Lister. I don't read fiction, but I am very interested in other languages, and by that other cultures. (I grew up in Sweden with Danish Parents and we migrated to Australia when I was 18).

I saw the title "Hail Bolonia" in a second hand bookshop and was intrigued, I bought it and read it, trying to figure out if this was a real country or on for fun. As I read it I became more and more entertained and more and more sure of the second possibility. It is about a fictitious kingdom in the Atlantic smack bang between Brazil East and Africa West. Past approximately Arabic, but either extinct or bred into the new population, which firstly came from a shipwreck of a ship on way to Australia from England, and later other shipwrecks. The government was a parody on the English, and life in general was a parody of the western world. The climate was beautiful so the people have the time and ability to do all the silly things that people do in our societies. The government absolutely the best for a laugh, together with the reminders of the stupidities of real governments around the world.

Hope you can find the book and enjoy it. Also I think Stephen Lister is a very insightful lighthearted but elucidating author. I think he belongs to the era of Animal Farm in the start of the 2000s when everybody were looking for a new world, a utopian country, which if such a writer is not looking themselves then they are bound to comment on it.

I loved the book and wished that I could have found a proper review on it. Well, here is a shoddy one. Cecil.