Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan

William Dalrymple

Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Country
United Kingdom
Published
2 January 2014
Pages
608
ISBN
9781408831595

Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan

William Dalrymple

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

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