NEW DELHI, June 23, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

Scottish historian and acclaimed author, William Dalrymple, was awarded the prestigious Hemingway Award 2015 for his book, Return of a King. The award ceremony was held on Saturday, June 20th at the Kursaal. The technical panel of the Hemingway Prize 2015 included writers Alberto Garlini (President) and Gian Mario Villalta, poet Pierluigi Cappello and historian of photography Italo Zannier, supported by the Mayor of Lignano and the President of the Region Friuli Venezia Giuli.

Here is the citation for the 2015 Hemingway Prize:

'In the best tradition of the Anglo-Saxon travel literature, ranging from Byron to Chatwin, Dalrymple has described the people and the places he met in his travels in the most telling and incisive way - delving into human fragility, into everyday life, into unshakeable belief. And with great sensitiveness, he has been able to record and successfully convey the unique voice of a different culture.' - Hemingway Prize 2015

     (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150622/10125398)

About the book  

In the spring of 1839, the Army of the Indus invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Nearly 20,000 troops-including 14,000 East India Company sepoys, accompanied by 38,000 Indian camp followers-poured into the country and re-established Shah Shuja ul-Mulk on the throne. But after two years of occupation, the country exploded into violent rebellion as the Afghan people rose in answer to the call for jihad.

The East India Company troops retreated through mountain snow drifts and were utterly routed by Afghan tribesmen-it was the greatest military humiliation of the nineteenth century. Using a range of forgotten Afghan and Indian sources, William Dalrymple's masterful retelling of Britain's greatest imperial disaster is a powerful parable of colonial ambition and cultural collision, folly and hubris. Return of a King is history at its most urgent and important.

'Magnificent ?¦ So perceptive and so warmly humane ?¦ This book would be compulsive reading even if it were not a uniquely valuable history' Diana Athill, Guardian

'Gripping piece of narrative history, impossible to put down once you have started' Mukund Padmanabhan, The Hindu

'A researcher par excellence?¦he has the insight of a historian?¦a writer of exceptional dexterity' Pavan K. Varma, Business Standard

'Arguably the most important work in Dalrymple's impressive oeuvre' Somnath Batabyal, Sunday Guardian

About the Author  

William Dalrymple was born in Scotland in 1965 and is considered the most important living exponent of the Anglo-Saxon travel literature, a tradition going back to Robert Byron, Evelyn Waugh, Peter Fleming, and Bruce Chatwin. His reportages have won the most important literature awards at world level, including the Wolfson History Prize and the Thomas Cook Prize, and in 2013 he was shortlisted for Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. As a world famous journalist, he writes for The Guardian, The Financial Times, The New York Reviews of Books and New Statesman. Among his latest books published in Italian, Nine Lives [ Nove Vite, Adelph 2011], the story of a travel in the Indian subcontinent searching for India modern changes through the lives of nine emblematic characters, and the most recent book, Return of a King [Il ritorno di un re, Adelphi 2015].

About Bloomsbury India 

Launched on 21st September 2012, Bloomsbury India upholds Bloomsbury's tradition of publishing books of the highest quality in fiction, non-fiction, children's, academic, business and education by both Indian and international authors. Bloomsbury India's authors include the international best-selling writers J K Rowling, Khaled Hosseini and Elizabeth Gilbert; Booker Prize winners Margaret Atwood and Howard Jacobson; Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer; and the best-selling author of inspirational books in India, Shiv Khera. 

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