Only an Ensign: A Tale of the Retreat from Cabul, Volume 1 (of 3)
The year is 1842. The British Army is retreating from Kabul through the mountain passes of Afghanistan, and sixteen thousand soldiers, camp followers, and civilians are about to walk into a massacre. James Grant's sprawling historical novel follows Richard Trevelyan, a young ensign whose commission in the Bengal Infantry has led him far from the ballrooms of England into a nightmare of frozen passes, Afghan tribal attacks, and institutional arrogance. The first volume establishes Trevelyan torn between familial expectations and his own conscience, between the woman he loves and the duty that may demand his death. Grant writes with the vivid brutality of a man who served: the landscape is indifferent and savage, the military command is blunderingly hubristic, and survival is a matter of luck rather than strategy. This is adventure fiction that refuses to soften its history. The Retreat from Kabul actually happened, and what Grant depicts is not romantic colonial adventure but the slow motion collapse of an empire's confidence. For readers who want their historical fiction to hurt.
