HUSSEIN - Softcover

O’Brian, Patrick

3.74

136 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006513727 ISBN 13: 9780006513728

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2001

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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.

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Review:

‘There is not a page that does not reek of India: the dust, the smell of street and jungle, the rumble of an elephant’s stomach are all here – astounding, precise evocations of a place O’Brian did not know.’
Martin Booth, Daily Telegraph

‘A gorgeous entertainment.’
The New York Times

‘Hussein has it all: the immersion in another world, full of local colour, the delight in a specialised vocabulary, the relish of male camaraderie, travel, treasure and fighting.’
David Sexton, Evening Standard

Synopsis:

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. First published in 1938 Hussein: An Entertainment is 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 entertainment'. 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.'

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