Book
Beloved Exile
First published 1993
After the Chartist crisis, Iestyn Mortymer is convicted at the Monmouth Assizes and sentenced to transportation. His path instead carries him into Afghanistan, where imperial politics and local resistance draw him into the First Anglo-Afghan War. The distance from Wales changes the scale of Cordell’s saga without removing its central concern with men subject to powers that treat them as expendable.
The novel places Iestyn amid the struggle surrounding Kabul and the disastrous British retreat, with Dost Mohammad Khan and Mohammad Akbar Khan anchoring the fictional adventure in the politics of Afghanistan. Exile becomes both punishment and survival: Iestyn’s desire to return home is tested against a war produced by the East India Company’s strategic ambitions. The book extends the Mortymer story into the imperial world that underpinned nineteenth-century Britain.
Historical Periods
Genres
Historical people
More from this period
2 more top-rated novels about First Anglo-Afghan War
Ranked by rating and voting volume; books already shown on this page are omitted.
More by the author
