The amazing tale of a resourceful & unscrupulous early-19th-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 & mounted on an elephant, raised the American flag on the summit of the Hindu Kush & 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 & 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, & 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. 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. If you enjoyed William Dalrymple`s ` Return of a King`, ` Josiah the Great` should be on your reading list.