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William Dalrymple

Biography

William Dalrymple

William Dalrymple is the author of numerous 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.

William Dalrymple

Books by William Dalrymple

Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42
by William Dalrymple - History, Military, Nonfiction

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 William Dalrymple takes us beyond the story of this colonial humiliation and illuminates the key connections between then and now.