From humorist George MacDonald Fraser comes the funniest stories of an inept soldier, Private McAuslan, now collected in a single volume. The most disastrous soldier to ever serve in the British Army, Private McAuslan, J., the dirtiest soldier in the world (alias the tartan Caliban, or the Highland Division's answer to the Peking man), first demonstrated his unfitness for service in "The General Danced at Dawn." He continued his disorderly advance, losing, soiling, and destroying his equipment, through the pages of "McAuslan in the Rough." The final story, "The Sheikh and the Dustbin," pursues the career of the great incompetent as he shambles across North Africa and Scotland, swinging his right arm in time with his right leg and tripping over his untied laces. Whatever he does and wherever he goes, Private McAuslan's admirers know him as court-martial defendant, ghost catcher, star-crossed lover, and golf-caddie extraordinaire. Now, all of George MacDonald Fraser's inimitable McAuslan stories are collected together in one glorious volume, for readers to gasp, giggle, and gawk at McAuslan's misadventures. Whether map reading his erratic way through the Sahara by night, or confronting Arab rioters, McAuslan's talent for catastrophe is guaranteed. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction--novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Author Biography

George MacDonald Fraser (1925-2008) was a Scottish author best known for his famous the Flashman Papers series and the Private McAuslan stories. He served in the British Army during World War II and spent the rest of his career working for newspapers in the United Kingdom and Canada. In addition to his novels, Fraser wrote screenplays for numerous films, most notably The Three Musketeers and the James Bond film Octopussy. Fraser lived on the Isle of Man, in the United Kingdom, where he died at the age of eighty-two.