Product Description

The amazing tale of a resourceful and unscrupulous early-nineteenth-century American adventurer who forges his own kingdom in the wilds of Afghanistan. In the year 1838, a young adventurer, surrounded by his native troops and mounted on an elephant, raised the American flag on the summit of the Hindu Kush and declared himself Prince of Ghor, the heir to Alexander the Great. Josiah Harlan, the first American to set foot in Afghanistan, would become the model for Kipling's The Man Who Would be King, but the true story of his life is stranger than fiction. A soldier, spy, doctor, naturalist and writer, Harlan set off into the wilds of Central Asia after a failed love affair in 1820. Following a brief stint as a surgeon in the East India Company's army, he joined the court of the deposed Afghan monarch Shah Shujah, and then slipped into Kabul disguised as a Muslim priest to foment rebellion. For the next two decades he would play a pivotal role in the bloody politics of the region. As commander of the Afghan army, he became the first general since Alexander the Great to lead an army across the Hindu Kush. There, in a crowning act of imperial hubris, he declared himself a prince. But a year later he was on his way back to America, unceremoniously ousted by an invading British army. He would die in obscurity in San Francisco, still boasting to sceptical listeners that he had once been an Afghan king. Harlan was an extraordinary mixture of parts: eccentric, inquisitive and brave to the point of lunacy, he was also an acute observer who understood the Afghan people as no foreigner had done before. His warnings of the dangers of imperialism have an uncanny echo at a time when relations between the West and Afghanistan are under intense scrutiny. Using a trove of newly discovered documents, including Harlan's long lost journals, Ben Macintyre has followed Harlan's footsteps to uncover an astonishing, untold chapter in the history of the Great Game.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #205058 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
Praise for A Foreign Field: 'One of the books of the year' Sunday Times 'A tale of immense stature. Stirring, ambitious and profound, this is storytelling at its very best' Stuart Wavell, Sunday Times 'Macintyre writes beautifully; his book is at once a great romance, a war story, a social history' Susannah Herbert, Sunday Telegraph 'A simple and touching tale of self-sacrificing courage and love in war!I loved it' Lyn Macdonald, The Times

Sunday Telegraph
'a rich and exotic tale, well exploited by Ben MacIntyre.'

The Observer
'Fascinating...startingly entertaining'.

Customer Reviews

I can't believe its not fiction!
Like the previous reviewer, I first heard of Josiah Harlan via George MacDonald-Fraser's Flashman and the Mountain of Light and was intrigued by both him and Alexander Gardner. Having been unable to all but the most rudiment information about either individual I was extremely pleased to discover this book by accident whilst browsing on this website.

There is not much more I can add that has not been mentioned already in the previous reviews - just that if you have any interest in MacDonald-Fraser, Kipling or Colonial India in general then this is a must-read book.

So much better than fiction...
I first became aware of Josiah Harlan through the fantastic "Flashman and the Mountain of Light" (and if you haven't read that then you must) and I've always wanted to know more about him. So it was a joy to hear that this book had been written. Harlan's life is even more fascinating and incredible than I had dared to imagine after his appearance in "Flashman" - an American Quaker who conned his way to becoming a surgeon for the East India Company, then decided to invade Afghanistan on behalf of its exiled king. He ended up as a not-so-minor potentate in the wilds of Central Asia, which is the part of his background that makes him the obvious candidate as the inspiration for Kipling's "Man Who Would Be King".

Ben Macintyre writes beautifully, and he manages to evoke the landscape and the time wonderfully. His style is inclusive, and his humorous asides are no distraction - if anything they enhance the book. In fact, even if you aren't particularly interested in Josiah Harlan I would still recommend it for Macintyre's writing.

I generally don't like to write a review without at least one little gripe. Unfortunately my one and only gripe for this book is very, very small indeed - when describing part of Alexander the great's campaign he says that Alexander defeated Darius the Great. He didn't - Darius The Great was an earlier Persian king. There, gripe over - and pretty insignificant it was, too, eh?

excellent
This is an astonishingly good book, very readable, and i recommend its reading to anyone with an interest in unusual characters.