The King's Shadow

The King's Shadow: The Extraordinary Tale of Charles Masson's Epic Search for the Lost City of Alexandria in the Wild East

In the age of empires, kings, and spies, Charles Masson embarked on a wild journey that would change the world. The King's Shadow by Edmund Richardson is an impeccably researched tale of adventure, espionage, and discovery in nineteenth-century India and Afghanistan.

Masson, a deserter, pilgrim, doctor, archaeologist, and spy, became one of the most respected scholars in Asia and the greatest of nineteenth-century travelers. He would take tea with kings, travel with holy men, master a hundred disguises, and even be offered his own kingdom. In 1833, he discovered the lost city of Alexandria Beneath the Mountains, a meeting point of East and West that had vanished for centuries.

Set during the Great Game, when imperial powers confronted each other in these staggeringly beautiful lands, Masson's story is one of extreme violence, both personal and military, and boundless hope. He would discover tens of thousands of pieces of Afghan history, including the 2,000-year-old Bimaran golden casket, which bears the earliest known face of the Buddha.

Richardson's storytelling immerses readers in a world of dreamers, opportunists, and ne'er-do-wells at the edge of empire, amid the deserts and the mountains. The King's Shadow is the extraordinary untold story of an obsession passed down the centuries, a journey through the wild east that evokes both the exploits of Indiana Jones and the epic adventures of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.