Hussein

by Patrick O’Brian (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $3.45

  A glittering adventure set in India at the height of the British Raj. The New York Times compared Patrick O'Brian's early novel to Kipling's Kim and called it a gorgeous entertainment.

  Published when he was in his early twenties, Patrick O'Brian writes of Hussein: In the writing of the book I learnt the rudiments of my calling: but more than that, it opened a well of joy that has not yet run dry. Hussein is a young mahout-or elephant handler-who falls in love with a beautiful and elusive girl, Sashiya, and arranges for another of her suitors to be murdered with a fakir's curse. The dead man's relatives vow vengeance. Hussein escapes and his adventures begin: snake-charming, sword-fighting, spying, stealing a fortune, and returning triumphantly to claim his bride.

  All of this is set against an evocatively exotic India, full of bazaars, temples, and beautiful women- despite the fact that O'Brian had never been to the East when he wrote the story.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2000

  $3.45

  A delightful tale of an elephant handler written by Patrick O'Brian when a very young man. HUSSEIN tells the story of a young mahout -- or elephant handler -- his childhood and life in India and his relationship and adventures with elephants. Patrick was in his early twenties when he wrote it. Caesar: The Life Story of a Panda Leopard, his first book, was written when he was 14, but the dry wit and unsentimental precision O'Brian's readers savour is already in evidence. The book was feted on publication and O'Brian described as the 'boy-Thoreau'. The book was published in England and the United States, and translations appeared in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Japan. In 1938 O'Brian published his next novel, called Hussein: An Entertainment, a marvellously readable adventure story set in India. Reviewers in the United States were particularly enthusiastic: the New York Times compared Hussein favourably to Kipling's Kim, calling it 'a gorgeous enterntainment'. Thomas Sugrue wrote in the New York Herald Tribune: 'The story of Hussein is a swift-moving, well-written account of events so fantastic that moonshine was certainly their mother...Hussein, in quest after his Sashiya, is a hero as alive and as human as Tom Jones seeking his Sophia. '