Return of a King: An Indian Army in Afghanistan (Paperback) | Released: 2014

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE, DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2013 AND THE PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN HISTORY PRIZE 2014

In the spring of 1839, the Army of the Indus invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Nearly 20,000 troops—including 14,000 East India Company sepoys, accompanied by 38,000 Indian camp followers—poured into the country and re-established Shah Shuja ul-Mulk on the throne. But after two years of occupation, the country exploded into violent rebellion as the Afghan people rose in answer to the call for jihad.

The East India Company troops retreated through mountain snow drifts and were utterly routed by Afghan tribesmen—it was the greatest military humiliation of the nineteenth century. 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.

‘Magnificent … So perceptive and so warmly humane … This book would be compulsive reading even if it were not a uniquely valuable history’ Diana Athill, Guardian

‘Gripping piece of narrative history, impossible to put down once you have started’ Mukund Padmanabhan, Hindu

‘A researcher par excellence…he has the insight of a historian…a writer of exceptional dexterity’ Pavan K. Varma, Business Standard

‘Arguably the most important work in Dalrymple's impressive oeuvre’ Somnath Batabyal, Sunday Guardian

‘Dalrymple, probably the best known British historian of India, has written eight acclaimed books on a wide variety of subjects, but this is the book he was born to write’ Fiammetta Rocco, Economist

About the Author

William Dalrymple is a bestselling author whose books include In Xanadu, City of Djinns, From the Holy Mountain, 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 and has, prior to the shortlisting of Return of a King, been longlisted three times for the Samuel Johnson Prize. He lives with his wife and three children on a farm outside Delhi.