Fiction · 1910
Prester John
David Crawfurd, a young Scottish trader in South Africa, stumbles onto a Zulu uprising being organized by an educated, charismatic preacher named Laputa, who claims descent from the legendary Prester John and possesses a fabled jeweled necklace said to be the sign of a returning African empire.
John Buchan published the novel in 1910, drawing on his own years working in South Africa for Lord Milner's administration after the Boer War.
Bibliomancer restores the 1910 text exactly as Buchan wrote it.
Contents
- Epigraph
- Chapter I — The Man on the Kirkcaple Shore
- Chapter II — Furth! Fortune!
- Chapter III — Blaauwildebeestefontein
- Chapter IV — My Journey to the Winter-Veld
- Chapter V — Mr Wardlaw Has a Premonition
- Chapter VI — The Drums Beat at Sunset
- Chapter VII — Captain Arcoll Tells a Tale
- Chapter VIII — I Fall in Again with the Reverend John Laputa
- Chapter IX — The Store at Umvelos’
- Chapter X — I Go Treasure-Hunting
- Chapter XI — The Cave of the Rooirand
- Chapter XII — Captain Arcoll Sends a Message
- Chapter XIII — The Drift of the Letaba
- Chapter XIV — I Carry the Collar of Prester John
- Chapter XV — Morning in the Berg
- Chapter XVI — Inanda’s Kraal
- Chapter XVII — A Deal and Its Consequences
- Chapter XVIII — How a Man May Sometimes Put His Trust in a Horse
- Chapter XIX — Arcoll’s Shepherding
- Chapter XX — My Last Sight of the Reverend John Laputa
- Chapter XXI — I Climb the Crags a Second Time
- Chapter XXII — A Great Peril and a Great Salvation
- Chapter XXIII — My Uncle’s Gift Is Many Times Multiplied
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
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About the author
1875–1940 · Modern
John Buchan (1875–1940) was born in Perth, Scotland, the son of a Free Church of Scotland minister, and educated at Glasgow and Oxford. He practised law, worked as a publisher and Conservative MP, and served as Director of Information during the First World War before turning increasingly to writing. The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) introduced Richard Hannay and the chase thriller that made him famous, followed by four more Hannay novels and dozens of other books — histories, biographies, over a hundred works in total. In 1935 he was appointed Governor General of Canada as Baron Tweedsmuir; he died in office in Montreal in 1940, of injuries from a fall.
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