The Triumph of the Sun FROM OUR EDITORS
In this richly detailed historical novel, Wilbur Smith fleshes out a bloody holy war in late-19th-century Sudan. After decades of brutal misrule by the Egyptian khedive, the Sudanese rebel under the leadership of Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahd (the Expected One) a charismatic religious extremist. To protect their national interests and rescue their nationals, the British fight the rebels but are driven back after the savage siege of Khartoum. Smith, a master as his craft, interweaves realistic historical detail with stunning dramatic action.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"In the Sudan decades of brutal misgovernment by the ruling Egyptian Khedive in Cairo precipitate a fierce and bloody rebellion and Holy War headed by a charismatic new religious leader, the Mahdi or 'Expected One'. The British are forced to intervene to protect their national interests and to attempt to rescue the hundreds of British subjects stranded in the country." Along with hundreds of others, British trader and businessman Ryder Courtney is trapped in the capital city of Khartoum. It is here that he meets Captain Penrod Ballantyne of the 10th Hussars, as well as the British Consul, David Benbrook, and his three beautiful daughters. Against the vivid and bloody backdrop of the siege of Khartoum, in which British General Charles George Gordon is killed and the British retreat, these three powerful men fight to survive.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
Celebrated for his historical fiction since the 1964 publication of When the Lion Feeds, Smith returns with a tale of holy war in Egypt. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Smith, grandmaster of the Grand African Adventure, quits his familiar southern haunts for the wastes of the Sudan, where wait the Siege of Khartoum, fates worth than death and more corpses than stars in the heaven. Fans of the literary novel, if they are ever so rash as to dip into one of Smith's Super Sagas (The Blue Horizon, 2003, etc.), are likely to swoon under the onslaught of the old-fashioned writing. So many similes. So many metaphors. It's just not done. Not these days. And yet here they are! " . . . her voice quivered like the strings of a lute plucked by skilled finger." "When he stood naked she rose and stepped back to admire him." " 'You bring me vast treasure, lord.' " Political correctness? Forget it. General "Chinese" Gordon, doomed commandant of the city at the forks of the Nile, may be a little crazy, but he's English, so he's honest and the crazed hordes across the Nile, who wait to rape and sack Khartoum, that isolated outpost of the Empire, are Less Than Human. The Muslim holy man stirring the tribes to murderous passion is a cynical despoiler of women. And the scenes of elephant slaughter! Gads! Who still reads this stuff? And yet . . . Smith's way with a story always prevails. Stick with him through the outrageous plot he has spun around the real-life siege and you will be riding on the fleetest camels, running nearly naked beside the finest horses, sitting in on serial defilements of a Valiant English Woman who finds pleasure on the very first try, and you will get sucked into what the movies used to call sweeping Cinemascope adventure and, like that ravished young lady, you will submit. You'll learn a little bit about the Sudan and its wretched history and, in theend, you'll see the coming of Modernity, and you will, like Smith, in his own way, find it disturbing and wrong. And you will have had a few good hours away from the current intractable Imperial crisis. Nobody does it better. But almost nobody even tries.
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