Description
A Best Book of the Year: The Economist, Slate, Kirkus Reviews
In 1839, nearly 20,000 British troops poured through the mountain passes into Afghanistan and installed the exiled Shah Shuja on the throne as their puppet. But after little more than two years, the Afghans exploded into rebellion. The British were forced to retreat--and were then ambushed in the mountains by simply-equipped Afghan tribesmen. Just one British man made it through. But Dalrymple takes us beyond the story of this colonial humiliation and illuminates the key connections between then and now. Shah Shuja and President Hamid Karzai share the same tribal heritage; the Shah's principal opponents were the Ghilzai tribe, who today make up the bulk of the Taliban's foot soldiers. Dalrymple explains the byzantine complexity of Afghanistan's age-old tribal rivalries, their stranglehold on politics, and how they ensnared both the British of the nineteenth century and NATO forces today. Rich with newly discovered primary sources, this stunning narrative is the definitive account of the first battle for Afghanistan.Author: William Dalrymple
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 01/14/2014
Pages: 560
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.67lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.35w x 1.21d
ISBN13: 9780307948533
ISBN10: 0307948536
BISAC Categories:
- History | Asia | Central Asia
- History | Europe | Great Britain | General
- History | Wars & Conflicts | General
About the Author
William Dalrymple is the author of seven previous works of history and travel, including City of Djinns, which won the Young British Writer of the Year Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; From the Holy Mountain; White Mughals, which won Britain's Wolfson History Prize; and The Last Mughal, which won the Duff Cooper Prize for History and Biography. He is a contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. He divides his time between New Delhi and London.