The Week 02/20/04
"[A] compulsively readable biography."


Book Description
"This masterpiece of history and biography turns the real-life adventures of Burton into a riveting tale...The last great word on the last great explorer of the colonial age." -Wall Street Journal. A New York Times best seller when it was first published, Rice's biography is the gripping story of a fierce, magnetic, and brilliant man whose real-life accomplishments are the stuff of legend. Rice retraces Burton's steps as the first European adventurer to search for the source of the Nile; to enter, disguised, the forbidden cities of Mecca and Medina; and to travel through remote stretches of India, the Near East, and Africa. From his spying exploits to his startling literary accomplishments (the discovery and translation of the Kama Sutra and his seventeen-volume translation of Arabian Nights), Burton was an engrossing, larger-than-life Victorian figure, and Rice's splendid biography lays open a portrayal as dramatic, complicated, and compelling as the man himself.


About the Author
Edward Rice is the author of twenty books, including The Man in the Sycamore Tree, Margaret Mead, and John Frum He Come. He lives in Sagaponack, New York.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"This masterpiece of history and biography turns the real—life adventures of Burton into a riveting tale￯﾿ﾽThe last great word on the last great explorer of the colonial age." —Wall Street Journal.

A New York Times best seller when it was first published, Rice's biography is the gripping story of a fierce, magnetic, and brilliant man whose real—life accomplishments are the stuff of legend. Rice retraces Burton's steps as the first European adventurer to search for the source of the Nile; to enter, disguised, the forbidden cities of Mecca and Medina; and to travel through remote stretches of India, the Near East, and Africa. From his spying exploits to his startling literary accomplishments (the discovery and translation of the Kama Sutra and his seventeen—volume translation of Arabian Nights), Burton was an engrossing, larger—than—life Victorian figure, and Rice's splendid biography lays open a portrayal as dramatic, complicated, and compelling as the man himself.

Author Biography: Edward Rice is the author of twenty books, including The Man in the Sycamore Tree, Margaret Mead, and John Frum He Come. He lives in Sagaponack, New York.