Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City
EDMUND RICHARDSON
(BLOOMSBURY, 352 PP, £25)
Tablet bookshop price £22.50 • Tel 020 7799 4064

Rarely has a work of non-fiction so brilliantly wrong-footed its readers as Edmund Richardson’s Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City, which expertly subverts expectations, interweaving narrative, history and biography throughout. There is something to be said for simply reading the book, as I did, with no forewarning as to its contents, like diving into a really good thriller or detective novel.

It is of course not about that Alexandria, the one in Egypt, but rather a city that was founded somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan, allegedly some time around 326 BC, when Alexander the Great began his incursions into India. The book is written as an adventure story, centring on the exploits and misadventures of one Charles Masson, born in London to a humble family in 1800, and initially known as James Lewis.