Josiah the Great by Ben Macintyre
The fantastical tale of a resourceful and unscrupulous early-nineteenth-century American adventurer who forges his own kingdom in the wilds of Afghanistan. In the year 1838, a young adventurer, surrounded by his native troops and mounted on an elephant, raised the American flag on the summit of the Hindu Kush, and declared himself Prince of Ghor, the heir to Alexander the Great. Josiah Harlan, the first American to set foot in Afghanistan, would become the model for Kipling's The Man Who Would be King, but the true story of his life is stranger than fiction. A soldier, spy, doctor, naturalist and writer, Harlan set off into the wilds of Central Asia after a failed love affair in 1820. Following a brief stint as a surgeon in the East India Company's army, he joined the court of the deposed Afghan monarch Shah Shujah, and then slipped into Kabul disguised as a Muslim priest to foment rebellion. For the next two decades he would play a pivotal role in the bloody politics of the region. As commander of the Afghan army, he became the first general since Alexander the Great to lead an army across the Hindu Kush. There, in a crowning act of imperial hubris, he declared himself a prince.
Praise for A Foreign Field:'One of the books of the year' Sunday Times'A tale of immense statureStirring, ambitious and profound, this is storytelling at its very best' Stuart Wavell, Sunday Times'Macintyre writes beautifully; his book is at once a great romance, a war story, a social history' Susannah Herbert, Sunday Telegraph'A simple and touching tale of self-sacrificing courage and love in war...I loved it' Lyn Macdonald, The Times
Ben Macintyre is the author of Forgotten Fatherland, The Napoleon of Crime and A Foreign Field. He is the former parliamentary sketch-writer for The Times, and has been the paper's correspondent in New York, Paris and Washington. He now lives in London.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780007151066 |
| ISBN 10 | 0007151063 |
| Title | Josiah the Great |
| Author | Ben Macintyre |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Year published | 2004-05-17 |
| Number of pages | 384 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |