Hussein (2nd ed)

A delightful tale of an elephant handler written by Patrick O'Brian when a very young man.

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. Caesar: The Life Story of a Panda Leopard, his first book, was written when he was 14, but the dry wit and unsentimental precision O'Brian's readers savour is already in evidence.

The book was feted on publication and O'Brian described as the 'boy-Thoreau'.

The book was published in England and the United States, and translations appeared in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Japan.

In 1938 O'Brian published his next novel, called Hussein: An Entertainment, 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 enterntainment'.

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'