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William Dalrymple is the bestselling author of In Xanadu, City of Djinns, From the Holy Mountain, The Age of Kali, 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, the Ryszard Kapuscinski Award for Literary Reportage, and has, prior to the shortlisting of Return of a King, been longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize three times. In 2012 he was appointed Whitney J. Oates Visiting Fellow in Humanities at Princeton University. He lives with his wife and three children on a farm outside Delhi.This sorry saga has been recounted many times, but never that I can recall as well as by Dalrymple. He is <b>a master story-teller</b>, whose special gift lies in the use of indigenous sources, so often neglected by imperial chroniclers
- Max Hastings, Sunday Times
<b>Enchantingly written</b> . . . In Dalrymple’s usual happy style of historical narrative, applied to a fascinating, neat and highly suggestive series of events, this long and involved book will be a great success, and bring the famous story to a large new audience
- Philip Hensher, Spectator
Of the books swooped into being by his scholarship (to which he himself has applied the adjective “obsessive”), this one is the most <b>magnificent</b> . . . His account is so perceptive and so warmly humane that one is never tempted to break away . . . This book would be compulsive reading even if it were not a uniquely valuable history, which it is, because <b>Dalrymple has uncovered sources never used before</b>
- Diana Athill, Guardian
Brilliant . . . Those who have read his <i>White Mughals</i> and <i>The Last Mughal</i> will know what to expect: a <b>readable </b>style, a <b>deep humanity</b> and, above all, an <b>extraordinary skill</b> in evoking the lost worlds of Mughals and Afghans . . . His pen-portraits are a masterpiece . . . <i>Return of a King</i> is much <b>the fullest and most powerful description of the West's first encounter with Afghan society</b>
- John Darwin, New York Times
A major contribution to the historiography of south-west Asia and of the British empire . . . <i>Return of a King</i> will come to be seen as <b>the definitive account of the first and most disastrous western attempt to invade Afghanistan.</b> Dalrymple's afterword should be put on college syllabuses on both sides of the Atlantic
- Sherard Cowper-Coles, New Statesman
<b>Splendid and absorbing</b> . . . William Dalrymple tells this tragic story with <b>verve, skill, and - unexpectedly in the circumstances - some humor</b>. Using unknown or underused sources from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, he recounts the tale from both sides, shifting the scenes, using eyewitness accounts, quoting at length heroic epic poems . . . A fine book
- David Gilmour, New York Review of Books
William Dalrymple is <b>a master storyteller</b>, who breathes such<b> passion, vivacity and animation</b> into the historical characters of the First Anglo-Afghan war of 1839-42 that at the end of this 567-page book you feel you have marched, fought, dined and plotted with them all: <b>once I had finished I turned straight back to the beginning</b>
Independent
<b>Brilliant </b>. . . even 170 years later, the events described in <i>Return of a King</i> still have the power to shock - and so they should. It is to be hoped that any future British leader contemplating intervention in Afghanistan, or any other part of the Muslim world, will read Dalrymple's book
Financial Times
Mr. Dalrymple's writing is <b>sly, charming and clever</b>. His histories read like novels . . . <b>This latest book delights and shocks</b> as he points the finger at both sides for their deceit treachery and cruelty . . . <b>Magnificent</b>
Wall Street Journal
<b>Definitive </b>. . . <i>Return of a King</i>, <b>like a great classical tragedy</b>, grips the reader's attention from start to finish . . . not just <b>a riveting account</b> of one imperial disaster on the roof of the world; it teaches <b>unforgettable </b>lessons about the perils of neocolonial adventures everywhere
- Piers Brendan, Literary Review
By turns <b>epic, thrilling, suspenseful, and utterly appalling</b>, at once <b>deeply researched and beautifully paced</b>, <i>Return of a King </i><b>should win every prize for which it's eligible</b>
Bookforum
<b>Dazzling </b>. . . Dalrymple is a <b>master storyteller</b>, whose special gift lies in the use of indigenous sources, so often neglected by imperial chroniclers . . . Almost every page of Dalrymple's <b>splendid </b>narrative echoes with latter-day reverberations
- Max Hastings, Sunday Times
<b>Outstanding </b>. . . Dalrymple has emerged as <b>a superb historian of the British Raj </b>. . . He excels at character, scene setting, and shifting between multiple points of view . . . His use of sources is <b>stunning</b>, particularly the trove of Persian-language material - epic poems, court histories and other accounts - he found in Kabul. No other western historian has given such a complete account of the other side
National
William Dalrymple's <b>phenomenal </b>achievement is to combine a steady overview of his broad canvas with a magpie's eye for detail and a film-maker's sense of when to shift the mood and focus. His writing is <b>ebullient</b>, but his conclusion is timely and grave. Any attempt to subjugate Afghanistan must, as one witness of that first invasion noted, be 'temporary and transient and terminate in catastrophe'
Intelligent Life
A <b>powerful </b>account of Britain's deluded occupation . . . <b>A superlative achievement</b>
Scotland on Sunday
Dalrymple is something of a secret national treasure; a travel writer and narrative historian of Britain's relations with India . . . <b>an enthralling, definitive account</b>
The Lady
<b>Masterful </b>. . . Dalrymple makes an <b>important </b>contribution by including recently discovered Afghan accounts of the war
Washington Post
This hefty and <b>extraordinary</b> book may be [Dalrymple's] masterwork . . . Dalrymple's <b>assiduous </b>scholarship and travel-writer's ease with language makes this not only an <b>incredibly well-researched</b> book, but something of <b>a page-turner</b>
Big Issue
This is vintage Dalrymple: <b>warp-speed historical narrative</b>, <b>meticulously researched</b> . . . My only regret reading this wonderful history is that it was not published a decade earlier
Evening Standard
Dalrymple is a writer who can make the most recondite historical issues come alive and with each successive book he becomes a more <b>entertaining and enlightening</b> companion . . . <i>Return of a King </i>is <b>simply quite brilliant</b>
- Alexander McCall Smith, New Statesman, Books of the Year
Probably the best known British historian of India . . . this is <b>the book he was born to write</b>
Economist
Sensationally good . . . Dalrymple writes the kind of history few historians can match . . . Drawing on Afghan, Russian, and Indian sources, [Dalrymple] tells <b>a truly epic story</b> of imperial ambition and hubris with profound lessons for our own times . . . I doubt that I'll read a better written or more important history book all year
Scotsman