The African Queen

As I mentioned in an earlier post, watching a clip recently from the classic Bogart/Hepburn film, The African Queen, lead me to download the original novel as an e-book - along with a few other novels by C. S. Forester.

Before reading The African Queen, I read Forester's first crime novel, Payment Deferred and went onto it just after.

Much to my surprise, the film and the novel had a number of differences. Obviously, a film produced in 1951 could not have the two main characters having sexual relations, but that didn't stop Forester from including sex in his 1935 novel. Not graphic by today's standards, but I was certainly surprised.

I was expecting the novel to end the way the film ended - with the German ship, Königin Luise being sunk by the submerged African Queen. It doesn't.