'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**
