Book description
In the spring of 1839, the British invaded Afghanistan for the first
time. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed shakos, 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.
Return of a King
is the definitive analysis of the First Afghan War, told through the
lives of unforgettable characters on all sides and using for the first
time contemporary Afghan accounts of the conflict. Prize-winning and
bestselling historian William Dalrymple's masterful retelling of
Britain's greatest imperial disaster is a powerful and important parable
of colonial ambition and cultural collision, folly and hubris, for our
times. Contains startling historical parallels ... This is a
monumentally important book that shows precisely why the British are in
a mess there today ... Larger-than-life characters throng Dalrymple s
pages ... Exemplary historian that he is, Dalrymple has discovered
hitherto unknown sources ... This history as it should be written
revisionist, readable and rollicking 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 and has three times been longlisted for the
Samuel Johnson Prize. 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.
