Return of a King
The Battle for Afghanistan
1st Edition
Published on 4. February 2013
608 pages
978-1-4088-2843-4 (ISBN)
Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2013
'As taut and richly embroidered as a great novel . . . a masterpiece' Sunday Telegraph
'Dazzling' Sunday Times | 'Magnificent' Guardian | 'Sparkling' Daily Telegraph
A towering history of the first Afghan War by bestselling historian William Dalrymple.
In the spring of 1839, Britain invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the high mountain passes and re-established on the throne Shah Shuja ul-Mulk.
On the way in, the British faced little resistance. But after two years of occupation, the Afghan people rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into violent rebellion. The First Anglo-Afghan War ended in Britain's greatest military humiliation of the nineteenth century: an entire army of the then most powerful nation in the world ambushed in retreat and utterly routed by poorly equipped tribesmen.
Using a range of forgotten Afghan and Indian sources, William Dalrymple's masterful retelling of Britain's greatest imperial disaster is a powerful parable of colonial ambition and cultural collision, folly and hubris. Return of a King is history at its most urgent and important.
'As taut and richly embroidered as a great novel . . . a masterpiece' Sunday Telegraph
'Dazzling' Sunday Times | 'Magnificent' Guardian | 'Sparkling' Daily Telegraph
A towering history of the first Afghan War by bestselling historian William Dalrymple.
In the spring of 1839, Britain invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the high mountain passes and re-established on the throne Shah Shuja ul-Mulk.
On the way in, the British faced little resistance. But after two years of occupation, the Afghan people rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into violent rebellion. The First Anglo-Afghan War ended in Britain's greatest military humiliation of the nineteenth century: an entire army of the then most powerful nation in the world ambushed in retreat and utterly routed by poorly equipped tribesmen.
Using a range of forgotten Afghan and Indian sources, William Dalrymple's masterful retelling of Britain's greatest imperial disaster is a powerful parable of colonial ambition and cultural collision, folly and hubris. Return of a King is history at its most urgent and important.
More details
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
ISBN-13
978-1-4088-2843-4 (9781408828434)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
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01/2014
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Person
William Dalrymple is the bestselling author of In Xanadu, City of Djinns, From the Holy Mountain, The Age of Kali, White Mughals, The Last Mughal and, most recently, Nine Lives. He has won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the French Prix d'Astrolabe, the Wolfson Prize for History, the Scottish Book of the Year Award, the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the Asia House Award for Asian Literature, the Vodafone Crossword Award for non-fiction, the Ryszard Kapuscinski Award for Literary Reportage, and has, prior to the shortlisting of Return of a King, been longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize three times. In 2012 he was appointed Whitney J. Oates Visiting Fellow in Humanities at Princeton University. He lives with his wife and three children on a farm outside Delhi.
Content
- Cover
- Praise for Return of a King
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Quotation
- Contents
- Maps
- Dramatis Personae
- The Sadozais and the Barakzais
- Acknowledgements
- 1 No Easy Place to Rule
- 2 An Unsettled Mind
- 3 The Great Game Begins
- 4 The Mouth of Hell
- 5 The Flag of Holy War
- 6 We Fail From Our Ignorance
- 7 All Order Is at an End
- 8 The Wail of Bugles
- 9 The Death of a King
- 10 A War for No Wise Purpose
- Author's Note
- Notes
- Notes cont'd
- Footnotes
- Bibliography
- Glossary
- Picture Section 1
- Picture Section 2
- Picture Section 3
- Picture Section 4
- A Note on the Author
- By the Same Author
- eCopyright
