Prester John is Buchan's first adventure story and is comparable in style and pace to Rider Haggard and Robert Louis Stevenson. Set in South Africa in 1900 it has a simple but compelling story which will keep you hooked to the pages from start to finish. From the eastern shores of Scotland to Southern Africa the reader is taken into an exciting but entirely credible world of adventure involving fabulous treasure, violence, double-dealing, a native uprising and the protagonist's eventual triumph over the forces of evil.
From the Introduction by Trevor Royle in Prester John:
Prester John is a wonderfully solid achievement. Not only did it give Buchan the confidence that he was a natural teller of tales but its fast-moving action looks forward to later adventure novels such as The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), Greenmantle (1916) and Huntingtower (1922). It was the prentice piece on which all his future fiction was constructed.
After his father dies, nineteen-year-old David Crawfurd is sent to South Africa to seek his fortune. A strange encounter on the voyage suggests that a tribal uprising is afoot, and David soon finds himself involved - at great risk to his life - with the charismatic leader, John Laputa. Prester John was John Buchan's first adventure story and is comparable in style and place to Rider Haggard and Robert Louis Stevenson. With an introduction by Trevor Royle. This edition is authorised by the John Buchan Society.
