Library Journal - Audio
★ 09/01/2022
This reads like a historical fiction novel by Michael Chabon, but it is actually the true story of the life of little-known explorer Charles Masson, a storyteller, archaeologist, and spy who stumbled upon impressive adventures and findings after deserting his military post with the British East India Company. Masson adopted a new identity and became fixated on finding the lost city of Alexandria Beneath the Mountains, one of the many cities that Alexander the Great founded on his quest to conquer the world. Richardson (classics and ancient history, Univ. of Durham; Classical Victorians: Scholars, Scoundrels and Generals in Pursuit of Antiquity) interweaves Masson's story of obsession, passionate curiosity, and dedication to discovery with Alexander's own story. Julian Elfer's beautiful narration takes listeners on the road with Masson and other explorers, who converged upon central Asia in the 1800s. Masson was one of the few who recognized and spoke out against imperialism and its consequences at a time when it was very unpopular to do so and paid the price for it by being relegated to historical footnotes. VERDICT A valuable addition any nonfiction collection.—Ammi Bui
SEPTEMBER 2022 - AudioFile
Julian Elfer’s pleasant British-accented voice and smooth delivery lend themselves to easy absorption of the fascinating story. A British deserter in 1820s India wanders improbably to Afghanistan, obsessed with finding lost cities founded by Alexander the Great. Part of Elfer’s talent is to shift his tone subtly to fit the text. Describing foolhardy absurdities early on, he conveys gentle mockery, but when the absurdities grow crueler as Britain invades Afghanistan and treats the locals with disastrous stupidity, his tone morphs seamlessly into something more serious and sympathetic. Richardson leaves out a lot of history that would help listeners unfamiliar with the period, but the engaging aspects of what he does tell, along with Elfer’s storytelling skills, result in an interesting and worthwhile audiobook. W.M. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
02/07/2022
Durham University classics professor Richardson (Classical Victorians) recounts in this intriguing history 19th-century British explorer John Lewis’s campaign to uncover a lost city in Afghanistan. Sent to India as a soldier for the East India Company in 1821, Lewis walked away from his regiment and eventually settled in Afghanistan. Adopting the pseudonym Charles Masson, he explored the plains of Bagram, collecting thousands of ancient coins, and developing a theory of ancient history that portrayed Alexander the Great and the Greeks as seeking to learn from other cultures rather than destroy them, a view that was in direct conflict with ideas of British imperialism. Masson eventually ran afoul of the British government and the East India Company, and he was imprisoned in 1840 as a traitor and a spy. His hopes of proving that Bagram was the site of the lost city known as Alexandria beneath the Mountains began to fade, and in 1842 he returned to England destitute and ailing. Though Richardson occasionally veers into extraneous minutiae, he spins a colorful tale of adventure and intrigue. This well-researched account restores an explorer to his rightful place in history. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
**The Spectator, The Listener and The Daily Telegraph Book of the Year**
"An enthralling addition to the genre...Richardson’s colorful and compelling account gives this forgotten figure [explorer Charles Masson] his due." —The New York Times
"Quite a story.... Richardson skillfully weaves the tale of Alexander’s empire with Masson’s adventures, using a novelistic approach rather than dry academic one that focuses on the action without sacrificing key details about the history." —Associated Press
"This is a jewel of a book. It rescues Masson from history's cutting-room floor and bring him richly, ripely to life." —The Sunday Times
"Utterly brilliant." —The Guardian
"A lucid, thrilling, and poetic narrative that does justice to the subject. [Richardson] is deft at vividly portraying characters in a few well-chosen words." —Literary Review
"Immensely enjoyable...[Richardson] clearly picked up Masson's love of storytelling along the way, as well as his skill for drawing the reader in with a play of smoke and mirrors." —BBC History Magazine
"A brilliant and evocative biography, written with consummate scholarship, great style and wit. Through the study of one man, Richardson illuminates an entire world" —The Daily Telegraph
"In one of history's truly important, but nearly unknown, adventure stories, The King's Shadow opens an incredible world of scholars and scoundrels in nineteenth-century Afghanistan through the weirdly obsessive search for the trail of Alexander the Great by Charles Masson, a military deserter from the British East India Company who became one of the founders of archaeology. This painstaking research has transformed into a fascinating, and sometimes insane, epic. Edmund Richardson's first book leaves me already wanting another one from him.”
—Jack Weatherford, author of the New York Times bestseller Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
"One of the great stories of archaeology, exploration and espionage told in full for the first time- and brought to life with passion, style, scholarship, empathy and anger. The story of Charles Masson's desertion from the East India Company and his extraordinary travels and discoveries in Afghanistan have been told before. But until now never has anyone uncovered the full, extraordinary, heart-breaking truth either about his remarkable life or his tragic death and burial in an unmarked grave. Edmund Richardson is a new star whose painstaking research and evocative prose has resulted in an utterly brilliant biography. It deserves all the prizes and acclaim it will undoubtedly win."
—William Dalrymple, author of The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire, finalist for the Cundill History Prize
"The King's Shadow feels like fiction - a thrilling lost world of kingdoms, spies, opportunists, and an unforgettable hero in search of glory and riches - and yet it's all real. This is hidden history at its finest: you may have never heard of Charles Masson, but it's safe to say that he changed the world. Richardson's debut is nothing short of extraordinary."
—Kirk Wallace Johnson, author of The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century
"There is something eerily prescient about reading the adventures of Charles Masson – if that is his real name (it’s not) — as he follows in the faint footsteps of Alexander the Great across Afghanistan, that most exacting of places that even he could not subdue. Richardson’s Masson slips and slides across the unforgiving landscape like some brilliant chameleon, changing names and professions with an instinct that makes for irresistible reading as he is thrown from one predicament to the next like some character in a flickering Republic serial, whether it be the unearthing of a golden, priceless artifact to escaping a madman’s Chamber of Blood. Hewn with an academic’s careful skill and shaped into an astounding story, Masson’s strange tale – above his many roles of obsessed archaeologist, agent, spy, and more – is of a man whose own footsteps take on their own legendary status in a land that even he knew could never truly be conquered." —Brad Ricca, Edgar Award-nominated author of True Raiders and Mrs. Sherlock Holmes
"Captivating biography of an archaeological pioneer sure to please history fans and students of the spy game." —Kirkus Reviews, starred
"This well-researched account restores an explorer to his rightful place in history." —Publishers Weekly
"Mesmerizing and informative, The King's Shadow is narrative history at its best." —Shelf Awareness
"We are delighted to report that The King’s Shadow is its own treasure, a beautifully told tale about one man’s obsessive retracing in the 19th century of the footsteps of Alexander the Great in Afghanistan....Edmund Richardson has written an enthralling chronicle of a slightly insane man on an even more insane quest." —Airmail
"The King's Shadow is history in the best sense of the word – a well-told story that shines a clear and penetrating light on the past. While thoroughly researched and extensively documented, it reads like a thriller by John Grisham. ... The book helps us understand the mystery of Central Asia and why the struggle to control it is such a central feature of our time. Conflicts often have a long fuse, and Richardson shows us when and why the fight over Afghanistan really began." —Christian Science Monitor
"The King’s Shadow shines as a real-life action-adventure saga." —Manhattan Book Review
Library Journal
03/01/2022
The life of scholar, adventurer, explorer, and spy Charles Masson is so outlandish that it's hard to believe it isn't fiction. Richardson's (classics and ancient history, Univ. of Durham; Classical Victorians: Scholars, Scoundrels and Generals in Pursuit of Antiquity) wild history of Masson's travels in Afghanistan may read like a thriller, but it is based on meticulous research and new sources. It's a fascinating account of Masson's all-consuming search for the legendary lost city of Alexandria Beneath the Mountain, which symbolized the point where East met West. Richardson goes beyond Masson's account of navigating Afghanistan and, in 1833, finding the lost Alexandria; the book also considers Afghanistan's political situation in the 1820s and 1830s, the truth of Masson's accounts, and the country's challenging terrain. For Richardson, the clash between cultures and values in Afghanistan is illustrated by Masson's account as well by the stories of Alexander the Great as they were told on the eastern edge of his conquest. VERDICT A romp through a dramatic landscape and events that will be exciting for anyone interested in history and, in particular, classical archaeology.—Margaret Heller
SEPTEMBER 2022 - AudioFile
Julian Elfer’s pleasant British-accented voice and smooth delivery lend themselves to easy absorption of the fascinating story. A British deserter in 1820s India wanders improbably to Afghanistan, obsessed with finding lost cities founded by Alexander the Great. Part of Elfer’s talent is to shift his tone subtly to fit the text. Describing foolhardy absurdities early on, he conveys gentle mockery, but when the absurdities grow crueler as Britain invades Afghanistan and treats the locals with disastrous stupidity, his tone morphs seamlessly into something more serious and sympathetic. Richardson leaves out a lot of history that would help listeners unfamiliar with the period, but the engaging aspects of what he does tell, along with Elfer’s storytelling skills, result in an interesting and worthwhile audiobook. W.M. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2021-12-15
A British historian resurrects the life of a self-taught archaeologist who discovered a lost civilization on the plains of Afghanistan.
Charles Masson (1800-1853) was a dreamer and military deserter who infuriated the East India Company’s army when he abandoned his post in 1827. He spent years ducking authorities and wandering in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, stoking his simmering fascination with the lost cities of Alexander the Great. He became a man at war with himself: a groundbreaking archaeologist, an unwilling spy, and a bitter foe of his former employer. With assiduous research, assured authority, and lacerating wit, Richardson, a classics professor, re-creates this hair-raising story. Masson first emerges as James Lewis, working for the East India Company and hating every minute of it. After his desertion, he took on his pseudonym and embarked on a quest to reach Alexander’s lost city of Alexandria Beneath the Mountains. But Masson, the first Westerner to explore Afghanistan’s ancient past, discovered something more compelling: dazzling evidence of a lost Greek-Buddhist civilization. His most famous find was the Bimaran Casket, a first-century bejeweled reliquary engraved with “the very earliest dateable image of the Buddha which has ever been found.” Eventually, a company spymaster tracked Masson down and blackmailed him into becoming a British agent, “a spy for the people he despised most in the world,” gathering intelligence on his Afghan hosts as the company fomented a plot to invade. Readers familiar with Afghanistan’s Great Game will appreciate this version of an unfolding catastrophe. History buffs and espionage fans will be fascinated with Richardson’s cast of characters, which included Victorian megalomaniacs, Afghan princes, Russian adventurers, and corrupt East India employees. Masson seemed consigned to obscurity, but today his discoveries are collected and cataloged at the British Museum and the British Library. Richardson’s biography, of a man who burned with the fire of discovery, completes his story.
Captivating biography of an archaeological pioneer sure to please history fans and students of the spy game.
