The adventures of a young Norwegian land-surveyor, who lived among the Boers in West-Transvaal and described their ways with humour and empathy. Nielsen befriended a number of Boer families and writes with great sympathy about their often tragic plight. Appalled by the destruction of farms by the British forces and the incarceration of civilians in the infamous concentration camps, he joined the Boer forces in 1899. His descriptions of the military tactics, improvisations and onerous circumstances of the Boer fighters, and graphic details of epic battles such as those of Vlakfontein and Moedwil, vividly bring to life the people enmeshed in these conflicts. At the end of the war Nielsen was captured and moved to a prisoner- of -war camp in Bermuda, where he remained until his release in July 1902, after which he returned to Norway. A jewel of a (true) story about the Anglo Boer War. — Fransjohan Pretorius