Prester John de John Buchan

Prester John: An End-Times Thriller Novel

John Buchan

en Limba Engleză Paperback – 30 sep 2010

Prester John is an exceptionally entertaining example of an early 20th century adventure story. Its hero is a young Scotsman who travels to South Africa to make his fortune. Expecting to settle down to a quiet life as a storekeeper, he instead finds himself embroiled in a hotbed of social unrest and violence. Part mystery, part travelogue, part spy novel, part treasure hunt, it has all the makings of a crackling good read. It is firm proof that John Buchan (The Thirty-Nine Steps, Green-mantle, and so many other novels of intrigue) remains a storyteller of the first order. Prester John is a thrilling story, full of daring heroes and wondrous villains-a forgotten gem of early 20th Century literature.

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Nineteen-year-old David Crawfurd travels from Scotland to South Africa to work as a storekeeper. On the voyage he encounters again John Laputa, the celebrated Zulu minister, of whom he has strange memories. In his remote store David finds himself with the key to a massive uprising led by the minister, who has taken the title of the mythical priest-king, Prester John. David's courage and his understanding of this man take him to the heart of the uprising, a secret cave in the Rooirand. John Buchan wrote Prester John, his sixth novel, in 1910, seven years after he returned from South Africa. It was his first to reach a wide readership across the world, and it established him as the writer of the fast-paced adventures for which he is famous. In this, the only critical edition, David Daniell shows what went into the making of Prester John and explores what sets it apart from the boys' yarns of the period.

Notă biografică

John Buchan (1875 - 1940) was a Scottish novelist, historian and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation. After a brief legal career, Buchan simultaneously began his writing career and his political and diplomatic careers, serving as a private secretary to the colonial administrator of various colonies in southern Africa. He eventually wrote propaganda for the British war effort in the First World War. Buchan was in 1927 elected Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities, but he spent most of his time on his writing career, notably writing The Thirty-Nine Steps and other adventure fiction.