Flash for Freedom! (The Flashman Papers, Book 5)

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George Hiscoe and Thomas Little - A pair of slave traders who Flashman is given to by the Mandevilles, charged with delivering him and Cassy to a plantation. Both are killed by Cassy in the course of their escape. One of Harry Flashman's few positive qualities is a sharp eye for a hypocrite, and we see the two-faced dealings of British lords who abhor far-off slavery but own local factories where children are worked to death, and the paternalistic American abolitionists who think of themselves as benevolent angels rescuing "simple creatures" from bondage. We're also treated to a portrait of young Abraham Lincoln, one of the few characters in the series perceptive enough to instantly see Flashman for the "rascal" he is. I'm not doing a PhD in postcolonial literature, thank God, but if I was I'd be tempted to put a chapter on The Flashman Papers in my dissertation. And in that chapter, I might argue that they are some of the most withering critiques of colonial attitudes and policies written by a white author in fiction. They appear, on the surface, to be pure escapism, but if you keep your wits about you, you'll find there's much more at work.

Flash for Freedom! is a 1971 novel by George MacDonald Fraser. It is the third of the Flashman novels.

Customer reviews

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I wouldn’t have been surprised if Cassy had burst out laughing, or in a fit of raage, but she did something that horrified Mrs. Payne more than either could have done. She bent down and gave me a long, fierce kiss on the mouth, while her chaperone squawked and squeaked, and eventually bustled her away. Fraser really revels in his un-PC approach to the telling of these stories but this one is particularly hard on a sensitive 21st century soul like myself.The story is quite a simple one, Flashman finds himself in hoy water over a card game. His father-in-law helps him to escape England, which he does on a slave ship heading off to Africa. Once they arrive in Africa, they manage to acquire a cargo of slaves from a local tribe in Dahomey and set sail for the Americas. Fearing interception by the Royal Navy, the captain offloads most of the cargo in the West Indies and continues on for New Orleans. In the long term, I want to see a North Korean society where its citizens are able to take matters in their hand concerning their future by electing leaders whom North Koreans regard as their representatives and being able to come to the United States and elsewhere to travel and study like their counterparts in the South.