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Alexandria - The Quest for the Lost City (Paperback)
Price: R233
Discovery Miles 2 330
You Save: R62
(21%)
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Alexandria - The Quest for the Lost City (Paperback)
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List price R295
Price R233
Discovery Miles 2 330
You Save R62 (21%)
Expected to ship within 3 - 5 working days
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'Not all lost cities are real, but this one was.' The extraordinary
story of Alexander the Great's lost city, and a quest to unravel
one of the most captivating mysteries in ancient history. 'Superb
... impeccably researched, but with the pace and deftly woven plot
complexity of a John le Carre novel ... utterly brilliant' William
Dalrymple, Guardian '[An] exceptional biography ... This is a jewel
of a book' Sunday Times 'A brilliant and evocative biography,
written with consummate scholarship, great style and wit' Daily
Telegraph ______ 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, an ordinary working-class boy from
London turned deserter, pilgrim, doctor, archaeologist and highly
respected scholar. On the way into one of history's most
extraordinary stories, Masson 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. **Chosen as a Book of the Year by the
Spectator, Listener and Sydney Morning Herald**
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