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Prester John

John Buchan

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Prester John | John Buchan

Prester John

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This classic adventure novel by the author of Greenmantle and The Thirty-Nine Steps relates the first-person exploits of young David Crawfurd before the age of twenty.

As a boy growing up on the coast of Scotland, minister’s son Davie and two friends were pursued with murderous intent along the cliffs one night by John Laputa, a visiting black African preacher, whom they had witnessed performing un-Christian rites round a campfire on the beach.

A few years later, when his father’s death forces Davie to quit college and join the tribe of wandering Scots, our hero finds himself in South Africa, assistant shopkeeper in a seemingly sleepy back-veldt store. There he re-encounters Laputa, now charismatic leader of an incipient native uprising, secretly preaching the incendiary creed of “Africa for the Africans,” and proclaiming himself heir to the mantle of Prester John, a legendary 15th-century Christian king of Ethiopia.

Can young Davie possibly penetrate the megalomaniac’s mountain stronghold, foil the insurrection, prevent a massacre of white settlers, and make off with the rebels’ war-chest of gold and diamonds?

It’s going to take some doing – and not a little derring-do!
ught that if it were explored the first thing found would be a fine stream of water.

We got to Umvelos' after midday, and outspanned for our three weeks' work. I set the Dutchmen to unload and clear the ground for foundations, while I went off to Sikitola to ask for labourers. I got a dozen lusty blacks, and soon we had a business-like encampment, and the work went on merrily. It was rough architecture and rougher masonry. All we aimed at was a two-roomed shop with a kind of outhouse for stores. I was architect, and watched the marking out of the foundations and the first few feet of the walls. Sikitola's people proved themselves good helpers, and most of the building was left to them, while the Dutchmen worked at the carpentry. Bricks ran short before we got very far, and we had to set to brick-making on the bank of the Labongo, and finish off the walls with green bricks, which gave the place a queer piebald look.

I was not much of a carpenter, and there were plenty of builders without me, so I found a considerable amount of time on my hands. At first I acted as shopkeeper in the naachtmaal, but I soon cleared out my stores to the Dutch farmers and the natives. I had thought of going back for more, and then it occurred to me that I might profitably give some of my leisure to the Rooirand. I could see the wall of the mountains quite clear to the north, within an easy day's ride. So one morning I packed enough food for a day or two, tied my sleeping-bag on my saddle, and set off to explore, after appointing the elder of the Dutchmen foreman of the job in my absence.

It was very hot jogging along the native path with the eternal olive-green bush around me. Happily there was no fear of losing the way, for the Rooirand stood very clear in front, and slowly, as I advanced, I began to make out the details of the cliffs. At luncheon-time, when I was about half-way, I sat down with my Zeiss g

ValeReads 03/05/2022
Man...I tried to make allowances for the time, but the paternalistic racial vainglory rooted in nonsense about the curse of Ham was just plain cringey. Also cringey was the conflation of Calvinism with fatalism. No wonder men like Chesterton rejected the doctrine so severely if this was the prevaili
Jay 09/03/2018
Prester John is the story of David Crawfurd, a young scotsman who is sent to South Africa for work, and becomes embroiled in uprisings of the native black South Africans against the whites.

I love Buchan's writing style. It's terse but expressive, compact, so that a massive amount of detail is prese
Stephen 11/21/2014
Not one of my favorites of Buchan's. The only whole book set in southern Africa. The cast of villains betrays more than most of Buchan's books the author's contemptuous attitude toward most (not all) persons not of the Anglo-Saxon race. I can give old books some leeway on racism and snobbery, but th
Avril 04/19/2013
John Buchan writes an exciting, fast-paced 'thriller' which is full of his love for the Scottish and African landscapes. His hero, David Crawfurd, is a million miles away from the hero of modern movies: he gets tired and hurt to the point that he cries, and there's never any suggestion that he's inv
Tim 07/23/2009
Published in 1910, this story about a Zulu uprising in South Africa as experienced by a young Scottish immigrant, is a good read, in the spirit of Rudyard Kipling or H. Rider Haggard: adventure in the furthest outposts of the British Empire.

But what makes this book worth reading is how many things t

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