The classic account of the greatest spy story of the nineteenth century — the secret war between Britain and Russia for Central Asia, with India as the prize. A John Murray Classics edition with a new foreword by Giles Milton.
For nearly a hundred years, the two great empires of the age fought a shadow war across the deserts, mountain passes and forbidden cities between the Caucasus and the Khyber. Young officers and explorers — British and Russian alike — rode alone into Khiva, Bukhara and Kabul in disguise, mapping passes, courting khans, and sometimes paying with their lives. The prize, as everyone understood, was India.
Peter Hopkirk tells this vast story through the adventurers themselves: their missions, their triumphs, and their executions in the squares of Bukhara. The result reads like fiction and explains, better than any other single book, the making of the map of Central and South Asia — and why Afghanistan became the graveyard of empires. The phrase Kipling immortalised in Kim began here.
This edition
- John Murray Classics — striking new series livery (the lion and the bear)
- New foreword by Giles Milton, bestselling author of Nathaniel's Nutmeg
Perfect for readers of
William Dalrymple's Return of a King, Kim, and anyone who wants the deep history behind today's headlines from Kabul to the Himalayas.
About the author
Peter Hopkirk (1930–2014) reported from the region for The Times for two decades. His six books on Central Asia made him the great chronicler of the imperial shadow wars.
