“A Sailor Of Austria”

John Biggins

Otto Prohaska stands with Jack Crabb in the ranks of fictional centarians telling the stories of their adventuresome lives. Like Crabb’s tale, Prohaska’s story is humorous, albeit less satirical. Prohaska is a submarine commander in the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Navy fighting a hopeless war against its much stronger Great War opponents and the navy bureaucracy. He has the luck of Harry Flashman but that can’t avert the inevitable tragedy of his nations’s defeat and the personal losses that accompany it.

This alternately funny and moving book with an interesting setting is an unusual and entertaining naval adventure. It’s the first in a series about Prohaska.