John Biggins

My son Will recently introduced me to the novels of John Biggins, an English author who writes about the early days of the 20th century, with a particular protagonist: Otto Prohaska, who is at various times a submarine commander, a naval gunnery officer and a flyer for the decaying Austro-Hungarian Empire.

There are four novels in the Prohaska series and they open a window on a lesser-known theater of WWI: the Adriatic sea. The background to the stories is factual and well-researched. The specifics, like those of Conan Doyle's hero of the Napoleonic wars Brigadier Gerard, are entirely fictional.

The first in the series is titled: A Sailor of Austria: In Which, Without Really Intending to, Otto Prohaska Becomes Official War Hero No. 27 of the Hapsburg Empire.

I highly recommend these books, especially if you have an interest in naval history, or European history, or just the World Wars. The humor is a little more scatological and slapstick than the subtle humor of Patrick O'Brian in the Jack Aubrey series, but is nonetheless very engaging. There is, for example, the exploding lavatory, and the camel, a reluctant passenger from Cyrenia to Crete.