Return of a King

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 -- Max Hastings * Sunday Times * Enchantingly written . . . In Dalrymples 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 -- Philip Hensher * 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 -- Diana Athill * 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 -- John Darwin * 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 -- Sherard Cowper-Coles * 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 -- David Gilmour * 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 -- Piers Brendan * 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 -- Max Hastings * Sunday Times * Outstanding . . . Dalrymple has emerged as a superb historian of the British

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.