Beau Geste is the classic adventure novel by British writer P. C. Wren. The book starts with a gruesome discovery at Fort Zinderneuf, where the walls are manned only by corpses of French Foreign Legion soldiers. The book subsequently relates the adventures of three English brothers who enlist separately in the French Foreign Legion following the theft of a valuable gem, ‘The Blue Water’, from their family home. Life in the Legion is dangerous as they deal with the unwelcome attention of sadistic commanding officer, Colour-Sergeant Lejaune, and battle with fierce Tuareg rebels. Eventually the mystery of the missing sapphire is solved but not before events take a final tragic turn.
With a special foreword from Pullitzer Prize winner, Michael Dirda, who wrote, “Beau Geste may never join any teacher-approved canon, but so what? It belongs, instead, on that special shelf with The Three Musketeers, The Prisoner of Zenda and Captain Blood.”