Return of a King

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2013’Dazzling’ Sunday Times’Magnificent’ Guardian’Sparkling’ Daily Telegraph

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 … this book is a masterpiece’ Sunday Telegraph