In the novel «Sensation» (1938), the famous British writer Evelyn Waugh demonstrates, perhaps more than in any other of his books, a truly Jerome-like ability to create humor literally out of nothing, cultivating an entire absurdist «tragicomedy of errors» from a trivial mix-up. A modest author of the column «Meadow and Thicket» in a provincial newspaper, due to editorial confusion, is sent instead of his namesake – a well-known writer and traveler – as a war correspondent to the distant African country of Esmailia, where, according to rumors, a civil war is brewing. Upon arrival there, he discovers that there is no war in the country. But Mr. Tappock is expected to deliver sensational news, and the quiet bungler, finding himself in the mad and life-threatening conditions of the former colony, tries to fulfill the editorial assignment – and survive at the same time…
