The Emperor's Coloured Coat: In Which Otto Prohaska, Hero of the Habsburg Empire, Has an Interesting Time While Not Quite Managing to Avert the First World War

Otto Prohaska #2

by John Biggins

This book follows the hapless Lieutenant Otto Prohaska in the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and finds Otto taking an ill-considered break from duties to engage in a mad fling with a Polish actress. After a desperate attempt to elude his lover's husband, he finds himself mistaken by anarchists as one of their own. Otto soon masters their code names and secret handshakes, but when he also learns of their plans to assassinate the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, his duty is clear. He must alert his superiors—now, if only he can find someone who will believe him!

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, World War I, War, Historical, Nautical

349 pages, Paperback

First published May 11, 1992

About the author

John Biggins was born in October 1949 in the town of Bromley; then in Kent but now an outer suburb of London and notable only as the birthplace of H.G.Wells and the deathplace of the Emperor Napoleon III. The son of an electrician and part-time Communist Party activist, his childhood was sickly and his schooling intermittent; though he made up for this with a great deal of precocious reading while lying ill in bed. In 1961 he moved with his family to South Wales, his father having in the meantime abandoned the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to become a steelworks engineer, and decided from then on that he would no longer waste time being ill. After attending Chepstow Secondary and Lydney Grammar Schools, then reading history at the University of Wales in Swansea from 1968 to 1971, he went to then-Soviet Bloc Poland and remained there for the next four years studying for a Ph.D. This experience gave him an enduring fascination with institutional dysfunction and the pathology of decaying empires; as did his subsequent four years of unemployment in the now-abolished Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food where one of his tasks was to write a history of the 1974 Cheese Subsidy in such a way as to show his then-boss in the best possible light: a job which he undertook with such creative relish that he was soon moved to another department.

After being advised politely but firmly to leave the Civil Service in 1980 he turned to journalism to support his wife and two children, then to technical authorship in the burgeoning IT industry of the mid-1980s, then to writing fiction in 1987 largely in order to amuse himself without much expectation that what he wrote would ever published. So it was with some surprise two years later that he found his first novel, A Sailor of Austria, being taken up by the first publisher who had a sight of it. In later years his day-job, by now largely in medical engineering, took him to France, Scandinavia and the Netherlands where he occupied his evenings by reading in the local languages in an effort to try and understand what was going on around him. Later on, two years spent writing and teaching an English course for Polish doctors also allowed him to develop a long-standing interest in medical history and led to his latest series of novels.

Despite advancing years he remains as neurotically active as ever, tirelessly roaming the landscape of whichever country fate has deposited him in with a map in his hand as though other people’s word wasn’t good enough for him and he really expects to discover lost temples or hitherto unknown tribes amid the flat waterlogged fields and motorway junctions of the Rhine-Meuse delta. An inveterate cyclist, he is currently much engaged in reviving the bicycle as a mass means of transport in Great Britain.

Since 2012 he has lived in the extreme south of France, in the Pyrenees near the Spanish border, and is now an Irish citizen.

Reviews

[Andrew Post · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Emperor’s Coloured Coat. The third of the Otto Prohaska novels was by far the most wide-reaching in terms of just where we see where good old Otto’s adventures take him. From the mental instability of the Heir Apparent’s staff to the river fleet of the k.u.k Kriegsmarine patrolling the cesspool like towns of upper Serbia. From Sarajevo, to the voivodeships of the interior Balkans with all of their headless charms. Seeing Otto face down a Japanese infantry charge at Tsingtao to the armed junk he captained that used improvised torpedo launches to sink an Austrian liner captured by the Russians. A full blown amok aboard a floating theocracy trying to make Jeddah in time for the Hadj to having to draw plans for his own stockade after daft Turkish soldiers botched his hanging twice! Otto truly hops and skips across the periphery of the blossoming world war that would eventually come to mark the end of his service to the Noble House of Austria with an exclamation point. I have to say that the constant fluidity of Otto’s movements at times made the story move quickly, yet in other instances it bogged the story line down and made it harder to get into. A bit more violent than “Tomorrow the World” but I would have to rate it just behind that prequel in ranking the novels thus far with “A Sailor of Austria” being my favorite by far. Again where Otto can be a bit too chivalrous for my tastes, it does well in serving to make the point of WW1 as being the death in a lot of ways of the age of chivalry. Otto is a man of a foregone time even as the events in this book are taking place. Although Otto is a moral man through and through, some of the auxiliary characters pick up the barbarity that Otto doesn’t partake in sufficiently to make the book feel real and not a PG version of what was very much beyond a NC-17 period of human history. Just enough of Otto’s later life is revealed in little tidbits to help you flesh out what happens to our honorable Ritter in the years after Versailles but I for one would love to read of Otto’s time with the Polish navy in the interwar period and his horrific time during the Third Reich’s reign over central Europe. Although more Otto would be great, and his unique way of describing his time during WW2 would obviously be very much anticipated by his fans, in a way that I can appreciate that our Otto just doesn’t fit into that level of carnage without him changing into something else. However as a work of historical fiction, Otto Prohaska again does not disappoint in “The Emperor’s Coloured Coat.” I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys the genre.

[Elliot · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first of John Biggin’s novels featuring Otto Prohoska, A Sailor of Austria, was one of the best fiction books I’ve ever read, so naturally I immediately sought after the second book. I was fortunate to find a copy at my local library so that I didn’t have to wait long between books. I had high expectations for The Emperor’s Coloured Coat and I am pleased to report that this book met these expectations. As with A Sailor of Austria, the story is narrated by an elderly Otto Prohoska looking back on his youth. I’m not always a fan of this technique, but I think Biggins pulls it off very well.

This story is set in the years immediately preceding World War I and in 1914 as well and follows Prohoska’s adventures during this time. Most of the story focuses on Prohaska’s adventures in the peacetime Austro-Hungarian navy which is just as entertaining as his time as a U-boat commander in the first book. I don’t want to give any of the story away because I found all the surprises in the story extremely entertaining. Really, this is a spoiler, don’t read this unless you’ve read the book or do not intend to read it

One of the best moments is when Prohoska is sentenced to hang, but the execution is botched. He is actually hanged twice but each time the gallows breaks before he can die on the noose. He is then forced to design his own gallows and is nearly hanged a third time before he is rescued. One of the more interesting aspects of this book is the number of locations that Prohoska travels to: the Balkans, China, the East Indies, Africa, and the Middle East.

The Emperor’s Coloured Coat was just as funny and entertaining as A Sailor of Austria, I thought. I found myself laughing out loud a number of times throughout the book. I thought some of the situations that Prohoska experienced were a little too improbable, but that’s why this is fiction, isn’t it? Regarding historical accuracy, all of the little details that Biggins includes combine to create an authentic-feeling world. While I am no expert on pre-World War I Europe, I feel that Biggins has done an excellent job crafting an entertaining story that is based in facts.

I am afraid that this review has done little justice to the superb book that John Biggins wrote, so I will conclude by saying that the Prohoska books are some of the best fiction books I have ever read. I recommend them to anyone interested in history.

[Sourojit Das · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a strnage indeed how Sr Lt Otto Proshaka manages to end up in the most diverse of places and meet the most intersting people. The U-boat ace's life as a pilot for the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine is as short-lived as it is interesting. Meetings with the soon-to-be-murdered Heir Apparent and his wonderful, oft-snubbed, wife. Romantic escapades under the nose of a very angery cuckolded sausage-factory owner, desperate adventures with Montenegrins hell-bent on murder, and the most amusing journeys in the far east. It's a thing of winder that John Biggins manages to keep the story as gripping as ever, and weaves the narrative so well that these tales do not sound far-fetched at all; rather make an interesting mosaic of patterns so unlikely to exist, that one can scarce believe how they end up happening at the mere drop of a hat..or a wrong tuen taken on an otherwise familiar road

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

Second book in the picaresque, historical-fiction, memoir about Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian, Naval, Leutenant Ottokar Prohaska’s early service in which he:

+ Becomes a naval aviator
+ Serves in the Austro-Hungarian Danube Flotilla
+ Becomes embroiled in the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
+ Serves at the Siege of Tsingtao
+ Escapes capture and internment to return Austria-Hungry from China by way of the Indian Ocean and Arabia

This story was an expansion of a reference made in A Sailor of Austria (Otto Prohaska #1). Great fun, if you’re a fan of: historical, WWI military, thrillers, with a high degree of technical and historical accuracy.


If he’d been believed, Prohaska could have saved the life of the Archduke and Duchess?

My audiobook was about 14 hours long. A dead tree version would be 374-pages. My audiobook had a US 2018 copyright. The original British copyright was 1995.

John Biggins is a British writer of historical fiction. He has written seven books in two series. This was the second book in his Prohaska series. This was the third book I’ve read by the author. The last being, The Two-Headed Eagle: In Which Otto Prohaska Takes a Break as the Habsburg Empire's Leading U-boat Ace and Does Something Even More Thanklessly Dangerous (Otto Prohaska #3) (my review).

Nigel Patterson is a British audiobook narrator and actor. While a tad too British for the mittel-european, Austro-Hungarian characters, and a bit weak on female character voices. However, he did a fine job of capturing the early 20th century flavor of the story.

Note that this is the second book in the Otto Prohaska series. Reading the first book, A Sailor of Austria is strongly recommended before picking-up this book. Otherwise, many references and characters from Prohaska's backstory may be difficult to understand. In addition, having some background in WWI military history, particularly on the Balkans and East of Suez, and a familiarity with period aviation would also be beneficial in reading this book. Also note, I read the third book in the series before the second book with no ill effects.

In A Sailor of Austria, Prohaska dies peacefully at the end of his 101-year life. Biggins, starts this story about one year before the beginning of The War. Although, having read that necessary first book in the series somewhat dampens the suspense of Prohask’s feats of derring-do in subsequent books.

Story-wise, the Prohaska protagonist was a Nominial Hero . His was the story's single POV. He’s a more staid, and proper incarnation of the Flashman character, whom the author takes inspiration from. Prohaska was a pleasant man, of the Empire’s gentry social class, who lived in a corrupt and decaying empire while following a dangerous occupation. Many times, he was the victim of that empire’s bureaucracy. However, he also had the aid of an enormous amount of serendipity.

The story continues the series’ format of a memoir narrating past adventures during the protagonist’s long career. In this episode, Prohaska: becomes a naval aviator at risk of life and limb; serves on the naval backwater of the Austro-Hungarian Danube flotilla; becomes embroiled in the assassination attempt of the Archduke Ferdinand which starts WW I; gets packed-off to the Far East for his trouble; serves at the Siege of Tsingtao at the beginning of WWI; and escapes capture, internment, and death returning to Austria-Hungary be way of the Indian Ocean and the Ottoman Empire’s Arabia. Whew. Unfortunately, I did not like every one of Prohaska’s serial adventures. And, there were just too many of them.


The Far East: Tsingtao to Vienna by: dhow, steamship, horse, camel, foot, and train.

Biggen’s series story technique has been to take well-documented historical events and to embroider Prohaska into them, with a few changes.

An issue I continued to have with this series was the minute technical, and historical accuracy of the stories, in contrast with the: pacing, number, and variety of Prohaska's adventures. My credibility was stretched between the two. Prohaska has too many adventures. He’s always the right man in the wrong spot to make history. Prohaska was also phenomenally lucky to be alive. Although, he suffers harm and privation, he always avoids death or being maimed at the end of every adventure. Finally, having read A Sailor of Austria, the reader knows Prohaska survives to a ripe old age. That somewhat defangs the dangerous situations he's thrown into.

Prohaska’s exploits were also amusing in places. This book continues the series’ lampooning of the Austro-Hungarian bureaucracy, and lauds the stoicism that is the unofficial philosophy of elite military units, like aircrews and submariners. Note that the story has a high-degree of historical accuracy. This may trigger Values Dissonance in some readers. For example, jingoism, and the ethnic politics of The White Man’s Burden in East of Suez.

Surprisingly, in this book I finally caught Biggen’s out. Our hero awakens on a foam rubber mattress at one point in 1914. Foam Rubber wasn’t invented until the late 1930’s.

Note that despite the hyper-realism in this story, it did not extend to sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. While not a player, Prohaska was no stranger to the ladies. Sex was handled in a fade to black fashion. All sex was also straight-het. Characters drank when they could find alcoholic beverages. Morphine was administered to the severely wounded only. Tobacco was consumed whenever available. And, there was a lot of 19th Century mittal europa opera, martial band music, and some folk tunes mentioned.

There was a lot of death, carnage and destruction-- the story was set in turbulent regions and during wartime. However, the blood, gore and dismemberment was not graphic. Although, it was a bit more descriptive than in previous books.

As a book, this was a cross between a period techno-thriller and a Flashman novel. I always enjoy picking-out the historical references and the period technology found in this series. In particular, I have an avid interest in WWI in the Far East. The early 20th Century foreign locales featured were well done. However, plotting could have used some work. The book was akin to six (6) or seven (7) short stories stitched together. Each short story ends with Prohaska being Happy For Now (HFN), before immediately launching the next. The number of adventures felt force fitted into a novel-sized 350-pages. Also, this book may be a tad too technical or too historically detailed for some folks. However, as a period techno-thriller I liked parts of it.

Readers of this book may also be interested in: A Naval History Of World War 1, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, and Flashman (The Flashman Papers #1) (all my reviews) and The Siege of Tsingtau: The German-Japanese War 1914 .

[William Kepford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read, coming off of the Flashman series. I read this before the "Sailor" book as it is chronologically first. Much a cross of Flashman in that historically correct in most instances, as far as I could tell.

Otto goes thru some serious changes- chapter to chapter, almost like a Ludlum book. In that Ludlum chapters span European cities from one chapter to the next, Otto from one chapter will have him in flight school and the next he is a co-conspirator of the assassination of the Archduke to start WWI. The next chapter will have him traveling to China. Pretty appealing. He always falls into trouble, rarely of his own making when compared to Flashman, who will get into trouble chasing his romantic interest. Otto, at least in this book, doesn't go overboard with his amorousness. He has some sense of duty and seeks very little accolades, formal or otherwise. That is good because every great thing he does is always buried by the government. He has no problem voicing, to himself, the incompetents in his government and military ranks.

Here is a quote from the book, of which I wish there were more: "Normally a commoner like myself, a naval lieutenant born of Czech peasant ancestors on one side and decayed Polish nobility on the other, would have about as much chance of being admitted to the latter gathering as a pig keeper would of entering the Grand Mosque in Mecca."

Difficult to read in some areas- military titles especially, but if you study them you can usually come close to true meaning especially anything maritime which is naval. A difficult title: Linienschsleutnant- I think is a surface naval lieutenant. I think.

Not a bad read. Looking forward to "Sailor."

[Corto · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one's a bit of a whirlwind...Though I did enjoy it as I was unaware of some of the conflicts in the far-flung extremities of World War I...I'd love to see Biggins' footnotes and source material! I wonder how much of this stuff happened...None the less, I'm hooked on the series. Too bad he's not writing anymore.

[Andrey zz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Галопом по планете. Краткий юмористический обзор о положении дел в Австро-Венгрии накануне и в первый год Первой мировой войны глазами молодого чешского офицера. В книге присутствует Югославия, Китай, Филлипины, Сахара (!), Вена и Венгрия. Широкая география и неимоверно лихие приключения. Дурацкая, короче говоря, книга

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

heel leuk maar eerste boek in de serie was leuker omdat dit boek net iets te ongeloofwaardig is naar mijn mening

edit 2023/06/13 5 ipv 4 sterren omdat je dit ook kan lezen als een satire op het oude oostenrijk wat ik heel leuk vind want ik weet niet of dat perse de bedoeling was (dit was niet echt het geval bij het eerste boek in de serie)

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dashing and gentlemanly crash course in Mitteleuropean history.

[Thomas Sulmon · Rating 3 out of 5]

"It was the usual post-Christmas stuff; and anyway, if you ever get to my age world events will not interest you a great deal since you will have seen it all so many times already."

From the first pages on, the book immediately reminded me of "The Good Soldier Švejk" : same nationality (Austro-Hungarian/Czech), same time setting (WWI) and same grotesque ans satyrical tone, even though Biggins tries hard to make the whole sound "believable". As I'm a history buff, this is what I enjoyed the most in the book : fun facts and details about that era, which shows how colossal a documentation the writing of this book must have required. I particularly appreciated its linguistic mishmash, French and German words intertwining with English.
I on purpose didn't read anything about the book before, so the tone was only given to me when Prohaska crashes his plane and meets "you know who". From then on the reading followed its course, but more slowly, as some situations were just too forced for my taste.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one more than A Sailor of Austria: In Which, Without Really Intending to, Otto Prohaska Becomes Official War Hero No. 27 of the Habsburg Empire. Otto was in the thick of things most of the time! He reminds me of Flashman but with a conscientious.

[Diana Sandberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haha - the previous book in this series, telling of Prohaska's adventures as a submarine commander in WWI, strained credulity a bit in places, but was so charmingly told that one forgave it. In this book, the author has given credulity its marching papers; Prohaska's series of wild adventures, escaping death time after time at the very last moment, veers well into Baron Munchausen territory. But still so amusingly told as to be very good fun. And, once again, in this Audiobook edition, the reading by Nigel Patterson is exceptional, with still more accents and characteristic voices flowing with seeming effortlessness throughout.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book in John Biggins' Otto Prohaska series, documenting the story of an Austrian naval officer in the years before and during the First World War.

This book does not pretend to be literature, just an enjoyable ripping yarn covering the fictional narrator's adventures in Austria, Serbia, China, the Netherlands East Indies, and Arabia in the years 1913-15. Along the way, our hero meets up with such figures as Kaiser Wilhelm II, Franz Ferdinand, and the Emperor Franz Josef.

This book was a lot of fun, and I plan to read the third installment in the series soon.

[minz · Rating 3 out of 5]

not as good as the first one. It seemed to ramble a bit more. It took me several tries to finish.

[Raphael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as sober as books 1 and 3. Less of austria hungary, more the global trotter

[Seth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first in the series was more Patrick O'brien, this one is closer to one of Fraser's Flashman stories, bouncing back and forth across the world in ever-more-improbable adventures. Really good.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good story. I wish that Goodreads or the author would list the books in order. This book take place before "A Sailor of Austria". Other than that it was a fun book to read.

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another sequel that's a prequel, though in this case it doesn't really matter the order of the memories. The extremely elderly Ottokar Prohaska entertains the janitor in the nursing home one snowstorm about his adventures right before World War 1. He had already reminisced in the first book, the 4 years of the war, but had mentioned how he was in China when war broke out. I am sure the later books will deal with his time in Buchenwald and South American adventures, but we'll see.

One of the best researched historical fiction I've read, without it feeling studied or forced. And this author's way with words brings it all to life--on Archduke Franz Ferdinand:
"The Archduke was always everywhere at once, with his loud, rather high-pitched voice and his strange, dead, fish-like stare--as if the irises of his blue-grey eyes were in fact portholes and some small animal sat inside his skull, peering out and operating a wheel and levers to steer him around."

Book makes the rather bold claim (and proves it in its fashion) that it would have been far worse if Ferdinand had lived to be Emperor. World War 1 would have just happened under another pretext and Ferdinand was even more inept (and crazy) than the current aged Emperor. Amidst huge events, Otto spends most of the book trying to get back to Austria from Serbia to China to Borneo to Djibouti to Saudi Arabia to the Armenian genocide, encountering sharks, pirates, and a floating theocracy along the way. And these books might be a bit atypical, much like Otto himself, in the genre of historical fiction or fiction in general, with the air of sweetness that runs through these. Otto and his companions fight war in such a polite, but zany way.

[Russell Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent prequel to A Sailor of Austria, featuring an improbable series of adventures for Otto Prohaska. These books remind me somewhat of Arthur Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard stories, though Prohaska is rather more modest than Gerard.

The lead character finds himself caught up in the plot to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand that acted as the trigger to the first world war, before getting sent to China in time to be involved in the Siege of Tsingtao. Escaping Tsingtao, he manages to find a Czech-speaking head-hunter in Borneo, and eventually makes his way back to Europe.

Like the first in the series, this book has plenty of humour, but also some sad moments, which probably have more impact because they contrast so sharply with the general light-heartedness.

As with A Sailor of Austria, the Kindle edition has some OCR-introduced errors.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A worthy prequel-sequel to A Sailor of Austria: In Which, Without Really Intending to, Otto Prohaska Becomes Official War Hero No. 27 of the Habsburg Empire

This book manages to explore the ethnic and political tensions of the decaying Austro-Hungarian Empire through the eyes of the likeable Otto Prohaska as he travels around the Balkans becoming embroiled in plots, politics and clan feuds alike.

The book manages to showcase the last gasp of the staggering wealth and illusory stability of the European empires who would shortly pour unimaginable treasure and blood into scarred muddy fields for the next several decades.

As a story it's a bit disjointed (Plausible for an old man's memoirs) but as a history/cultural examination it is top-notch and tragic.

Highly recommended.

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are four novels about the adventures of Otto Prochaska during World War I. "The Emperor's Coloured Coat is the first. Like the others, it is a clever, touching book about war and memory. It is not a comic novel, but it is animated by a central character who has a sense of humor, and who is a hero despite his self-deprecating ways. Prochaska's service as a u-boat officer in the Austrian navy makes for thrilling historical reading, and there's not much in the historical fiction canon about the Afdriatic theater of the war. I look forward to the next three.

[Mshelton50 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Again, John Biggins certainly does his research. Not only is The Emperor's Coloured Coat vastly entertaining to read, the sheer amount of historical detail Biggins crams in is amazing. From the Habsburg court's machinations against the morganatic wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to Conrad von Hotzendorf's banging the drum for war against Serbia, to the Armenian genocide, the author works it all in. Of course, our hero, Otto Prohaska, gets in a number of entertaining scrapes along the way, and Biggins tells the tale with a delightfully dry sense of humour.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This sequel wasn't quite up to the standard of the first book in the series. There were some weak points in the story line, such as characters not introduced or explained before they came into the story. This happened with the Captain of ship in the far East--suddenly Prohaska is talking to him and we don't even know his name. The story at times went past the bounds of amusing into the silly.
Overall a good book, with some funny parts, but not as good as the first book.

[Nicholasb · Rating 4 out of 5]

like a more fantastical Flashman - still grounded in reality, but faster paced. fun.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

WW1 from the Austro-Hungarian point of view. Sadly unique because no one has before or since tackled the subject. Pity he only wrote 4 books.

[Donald McEntee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting story about a very interesting person in a very interesting time.

[Ratratrat]

Dalla caduta con aereo a Konopiste, dove rovescia la tavola del banchetto di Francesco Ferdinando ed il Kaiser, all'avventuriera polacca, all'incontro con la Mano Nera in Serbia e l'attentato di Sarajevo, otto Prohaska in questo libro ha avventure un apiù imprevedibile dell'altra e se la cava sempre per il rotto della cuffia: fino a lla Cina e al cacciatore di teste daiako dle Borneo.. che parla la lingua ceca! rientrerà in Europa a guerra cominciata. le avventure sono rocambolesche, ma il mondo descritto è verosimile..