'Not all lost cities are real but this one was.' The extraordinary story of Alexander the
Great's lost city and a quest to unravel one of the most captivating mysteries in ancient
history. 'Superb . impeccably researched but with the pace and deftly woven plot complexity
of a John le Carré novel ... utterly brilliant ' William Dalrymple Guardian '[An] exceptional
biography ... This is a jewel of a book ' Sunday Times 'A brilliant and evocative biography
written with consummate scholarship great style and wit ' Daily Telegraph ______ For
centuries the city of Alexandria Beneath the Mountains was a meeting point of East and West.
Then it vanished. In 1833 it was discovered in Afghanistan by the unlikeliest person
imaginable: Charles Masson an ordinary working-class boy from London turned deserter pilgrim
doctor archaeologist and highly respected scholar. On the way into one of history's most
extraordinary stories Masson would take tea with kings travel with holy men and become the
master of a hundred disguises he would see things no westerner had glimpsed before and few
have glimpsed since. He would spy for the East India Company and be suspected of spying for
Russia at the same time for this was the era of the Great Game when imperial powers
confronted each other in these staggeringly beautiful lands. Masson discovered tens of
thousands of pieces of Afghan history including the 2 000-year-old Bimaran golden casket
which has upon it the earliest known face of the Buddha. He would be offered his own kingdom
he would change the world and the world would destroy him. This is a wild journey through
nineteenth-century India and Afghanistan with impeccably researched storytelling that shows us
a world of espionage and dreamers ne'er-do-wells and opportunists extreme violence both
personal and military and boundless hope. At the edge of empire amid the deserts and the
mountains it is the story of an obsession passed down the centuries. **Chosen as a Book of
the Year by the Spectator Listener and Sydney Morning Herald **
