A towering history of the first Afghan War by bestselling historian William Dalrymple. Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, 2013
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.
This sorry saga has been recounted many times, but never that I can
recall as well as by Dalrymple. He is a master story-teller, whose
special gift lies in the use of indigenous sources, so often
neglected by imperial chroniclers
*Sunday Times*
Enchantingly written . . . In Dalrymple’s usual happy style of
historical narrative, applied to a fascinating, neat and highly
suggestive series of events, this long and involved book will be a
great success, and bring the famous story to a large new
audience
*Spectator*
Of the books swooped into being by his scholarship (to which he
himself has applied the adjective “obsessive”), this one is the
most magnificent . . . His account is so perceptive and so warmly
humane that one is never tempted to break away . . . This book
would be compulsive reading even if it were not a uniquely valuable
history, which it is, because Dalrymple has uncovered sources never
used before
*Guardian*
Brilliant . . . Those who have read his White Mughals and The Last
Mughal will know what to expect: a readable style, a deep humanity
and, above all, an extraordinary skill in evoking the lost worlds
of Mughals and Afghans . . . His pen-portraits are a masterpiece .
. . Return of a King is much the fullest and most powerful
description of the West's first encounter with Afghan society
*New York Times*
A major contribution to the historiography of south-west Asia and
of the British empire . . . Return of a King will come to be seen
as the definitive account of the first and most disastrous western
attempt to invade Afghanistan. Dalrymple's afterword should be put
on college syllabuses on both sides of the Atlantic
*New Statesman*
Splendid and absorbing . . . William Dalrymple tells this tragic
story with verve, skill, and - unexpectedly in the circumstances -
some humor. Using unknown or underused sources from India, Pakistan
and Afghanistan, he recounts the tale from both sides, shifting the
scenes, using eyewitness accounts, quoting at length heroic epic
poems . . . A fine book
*New York Review of Books*
William Dalrymple is a master storyteller, who breathes such
passion, vivacity and animation into the historical characters of
the First Anglo-Afghan war of 1839-42 that at the end of this
567-page book you feel you have marched, fought, dined and plotted
with them all: once I had finished I turned straight back to the
beginning
*Independent*
Brilliant . . . even 170 years later, the events described in
Return of a King still have the power to shock - and so they
should. It is to be hoped that any future British leader
contemplating intervention in Afghanistan, or any other part of the
Muslim world, will read Dalrymple's book
*Financial Times*
Mr. Dalrymple's writing is sly, charming and clever. His histories
read like novels . . . This latest book delights and shocks as he
points the finger at both sides for their deceit treachery and
cruelty . . . Magnificent
*Wall Street Journal*
Definitive . . . Return of a King, like a great classical tragedy,
grips the reader's attention from start to finish . . . not just a
riveting account of one imperial disaster on the roof of the world;
it teaches unforgettable lessons about the perils of neocolonial
adventures everywhere
*Literary Review*
By turns epic, thrilling, suspenseful, and utterly appalling, at
once deeply researched and beautifully paced, Return of a King
should win every prize for which it's eligible
*Bookforum*
Dazzling . . . Dalrymple is a master storyteller, whose special
gift lies in the use of indigenous sources, so often neglected by
imperial chroniclers . . . Almost every page of Dalrymple's
splendid narrative echoes with latter-day reverberations
*Sunday Times*
Outstanding . . . Dalrymple has emerged as a superb historian of
the British Raj . . . He excels at character, scene setting, and
shifting between multiple points of view . . . His use of sources
is stunning, particularly the trove of Persian-language material -
epic poems, court histories and other accounts - he found in Kabul.
No other western historian has given such a complete account of the
other side
*National*
William Dalrymple's phenomenal achievement is to combine a steady
overview of his broad canvas with a magpie's eye for detail and a
film-maker's sense of when to shift the mood and focus. His writing
is ebullient, but his conclusion is timely and grave. Any attempt
to subjugate Afghanistan must, as one witness of that first
invasion noted, be 'temporary and transient and terminate in
catastrophe'
*Intelligent Life*
A powerful account of Britain's deluded occupation . . . A
superlative achievement
*Scotland on Sunday*
Dalrymple is something of a secret national treasure; a travel
writer and narrative historian of Britain's relations with India .
. . an enthralling, definitive account
*The Lady*
Masterful . . . Dalrymple makes an important contribution by
including recently discovered Afghan accounts of the war
*Washington Post*
This hefty and extraordinary book may be [Dalrymple's] masterwork .
. . Dalrymple's assiduous scholarship and travel-writer's ease with
language makes this not only an incredibly well-researched book,
but something of a page-turner
*Big Issue*
This is vintage Dalrymple: warp-speed historical narrative,
meticulously researched . . . My only regret reading this wonderful
history is that it was not published a decade earlier
*Evening Standard*
Dalrymple is a writer who can make the most recondite historical
issues come alive and with each successive book he becomes a more
entertaining and enlightening companion . . . Return of a King is
simply quite brilliant
*New Statesman, Books of the Year*
Probably the best known British historian of India . . . this is
the book he was born to write
*Economist*
Sensationally good . . . Dalrymple writes the kind of history few
historians can match . . . Drawing on Afghan, Russian, and Indian
sources, [Dalrymple] tells a truly epic story of imperial ambition
and hubris with profound lessons for our own times . . . I doubt
that I'll read a better written or more important history book all
year
*Scotsman*
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
