"Orientalist
A01=Anabel Loyd
Afghanistan
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Anabel Loyd
automatic-update
Bukhara
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=BG
Category=DNBH
Central Asian travels
Coco de Mer
Constantinople
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Pre-order
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Great Game
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Hungary
Jewish Homeland
kashkuls
Khiva
Language_English
London
Mashhad
Middle Asia".
Orientalism
PA=Not yet available
Persia
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Forthcoming
Reshid Effendi
Royal family
Russia
scholar of the East
Silk Road
softlaunch
Sultan
Tehran
Turkestan
Turkey
Product details
- ISBN 9781913368975
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 12 Sep 2024
- Publisher: Haus Publishing
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Who was Arminius Vambéry? A poverty-stricken, Jewish autodidact; a linguist, traveller, and writer; or a sometime Zionist, inspiration for Dracula’s nemesis, and British secret agent?
Vambéry wrote his own story many times over. And it was these often highly embroidered accounts of journeys through Persia and Central Asia that saw him acclaimed in Victorian England as an intrepid explorer and daring adventurer. Against the backdrop of the ‘Great Game’, in which Russia and Britain jostled for territory, influence, and control of the borders and gateways to Central Asia and its wealth, Vambéry played the roles of hero and double-dealer, of fascinated witness and imperial charlatan.
The Dervish Bowl is the story of these competing narratives, a compelling investigation of the ever-changing persona Vambéry created for himself, and of the man who emerges from his private correspondence and the accounts of both his friends and his enemies, many of whom were themselves major players in the geopolitical adventures of the volatile nineteenth century – a time when Britain’s ambitions for her empire were at their height, yet nothing and no one was quite as they seemed.
Anabel Loyd has been a regular columnist for The Telegraph India for many years. She has lived and worked in India and has a particular interest in the Indian history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
