The Man Who Would Be King
Gloria gave me a book for Christmas that ranks as one of the most interesting I've ever read.In my whole life.
The Man Who Would Be King (by Ben Macintyre) is the biography of Josiah Harlan, a Pennsylvania Quaker who went to Afghanistan in the early nineteenth century and wound up living one of the most astonishing lives in history. He went from being a rank amateur in everything, including life, to advising Afghan kings and becoming a prince himself.
When Harlan first arrived in Afghanistan, he should have been killed within days, and nearly was--many times. But, through a remarkable combination of luck and instinct, he kept surviving, and the longer he survived, the smarter he got.
It's impossible for me to even describe the scope of his life--every page includes some kind of remarkable incident that, for most people, would have been the most interesting moment of their lives. Incredibly, though, Harlan had thousands of those moments. Here's an excerpt from the description of Harlan's life on the back cover:
Soldier, spy, doctor, naturalist, traveler, and writer, Joseph Harlan, with all the imperial hubris of the time, wanted to be a king. In an amazing twenty-year journey around Central Asia, he was variously employed as surgeon to the Maharaja of Punjab, revolutionary agent for the exiled Afghan King, and then commander-in-chief of the Afghan armies.
I couldn't stop reading this book--I could hardly put it down. When I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about reading it. I haven't felt that way about a book in a long time.
Oh, and if you're wondering about the book's title, Rudyard Kipling did meet Harlan, and there are certainly some interesting correspondences between Kipling's book and Harlan's life.
Here's an Amazon link:
The Man Who Would Be King.
<< Home