Prester John

Book excerpt: Prester John is an adventure thriller novel by the Scottish author John Buchan. Nineteen-year-old David Crawfurd travels from Scotland to South Africa to work as a storekeeper. On the voyage he encounters again John Laputa, the celebrated Zulu minister, of whom he has strange memories. In his remote store David finds himself with the key to a massive uprising, led by the minister, who has taken the title of the mythical priest-king, Prester John. David's courage and his understanding of this man take him to the heart of the uprising, a secret cave in the Rooirand. John Buchan wrote Prester John seven years after he himself returned from South Africa. It was his first to reach a wide readership across the world, and it established him as the writer of fast-paced adventures for which he is famous.