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Obsession, Betrayal, and the Deadly Quest for the Lost City of Alexandria
by Edmund Richardson
Impeccably researched, and written like a thriller, Edmund Richardson's The King's Shadow is the extraordinary untold and wild journey of Charles Masson - think Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid meets Indiana Jones - and his search for the Lost City of Alexandria in the "Wild East" during the age of empires, kings, and spies.
For centuries the city of Alexandria Beneath the Mountains was a meeting point of East and West. Then it vanished. In 1833 it was discovered in Afghanistan by the unlikeliest person imaginable: Charles Masson, deserter, pilgrim, doctor, archaeologist, spy, one of the most respected scholars in Asia, and the greatest of nineteenth-century travelers.
On the way into one of history's most extraordinary stories, he would take tea with kings, travel with holy men and become the master of a hundred disguises; he would see things no westerner had glimpsed before and few have glimpsed since. He would spy for the East India Company and be suspected of spying for Russia at the same time, for this was the era of the Great Game, when imperial powers confronted each other in these staggeringly beautiful lands. Masson discovered tens of thousands of pieces of Afghan history, including the 2,000-year-old Bimaran golden casket, which has upon it the earliest known face of the Buddha. He would be offered his own kingdom; he would change the world, and the world would destroy him.
This is a wild journey through nineteenth-century India and Afghanistan, with impeccably researched storytelling that shows us a world of espionage and dreamers, ne'er-do-wells and opportunists, extreme violence both personal and military, and boundless hope. At the edge of empire, amid the deserts and the mountains, it is the story of an obsession passed down the centuries.
"Readers familiar with Afghanistan's Great Game will appreciate this version of an unfolding catastrophe. History buffs and espionage fans will be fascinated with Richardson's cast of characters, which included Victorian megalomaniacs, Afghan princes, Russian adventurers, and corrupt East India employees...Captivating biography of an archaeological pioneer sure to please history fans and students of the spy game." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Durham University classics professor Richardson recounts in this intriguing history 19th-century British explorer John Lewis's campaign to uncover a lost city in Afghanistan...Though Richardson occasionally veers into extraneous minutiae, he spins a colorful tale of adventure and intrigue. This well-researched account restores an explorer to his rightful place in history." - Publishers Weekly
"A romp through a dramatic landscape and events that will be exciting for anyone interested in history and, in particular, classical archaeology." - Library Journal
"A brilliant and evocative biography, written with consummate scholarship, great style and wit. Through the study of one man, Richardson illuminates an entire world" - The Daily Telegraph (UK)
"This is a jewel of a book. It rescues Masson from history's cutting-room floor and bring him richly, ripely to life." - The Sunday Times (UK)
"In one of history's truly important, but nearly unknown, adventure stories, The King's Shadow opens an incredible world of scholars and scoundrels in nineteenth-century Afghanistan through the weirdly obsessive search for the trail of Alexander the Great by Charles Masson, a military deserter from the British East India Company who became one of the founders of archaeology. This painstaking research has transformed into a fascinating, and sometimes insane, epic. Edmund Richardson's first book leaves me already wanting another one from him." - Jack Weatherford, author of the New York Times bestseller Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
"The King's Shadow feels like fiction - a thrilling lost world of kingdoms, spies, opportunists, and an unforgettable hero in search of glory and riches - and yet it's all real. This is hidden history at its finest: you may have never heard of Charles Masson, but it's safe to say that he changed the world. Richardson's debut is nothing short of extraordinary." - Kirk Wallace Johnson, author of The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century
This information about The King's Shadow was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Edmund Richardson is Associate Professor of Classics at Durham University, UK. He has published Classical Victorians: Scholars, Scoundrels and Generals in Pursuit of Antiquity (2013), and was named one of the BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinkers in 2016.
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