In a phrase coined by Captain Arthur Connolly of the East India Company
before he was beheaded in Bokhara for spying in 1842, a "Great Game" was
played between Tsarist Russia and Victorian England for supremacy in
Central Asia. At stake was the security of India, key to the wealth of
the British Empire. When play began early in the 19th century, the
frontiers of the two imperial powers lay two thousand miles apart, across
vast deserts and almost impassable mountain ranges; by the end, only 20
miles separated the two rivals. Peter Hopkirk, a former reporter for The
Times of London with wide experience of the region, tells an extraordinary
story of ambition, intrigue, and military adventure. His sensational
narrative moves at breakneck pace, yet even as he paints his colorful
characters--tribal chieftains, generals, spies, Queen Victoria herself--
he skillfully provides a clear overview of the geographical and diplomatic
framework. The Great Game was Russia's version of America's "Manifest
Destiny" to dominate a continent, and Hopkirk is careful to explain
Russian viewpoints as fully as those of the British. The story ends with
the fall of Tsarist Russia in 1917, but the demise of the Soviet Empire
(hastened by a decade of bloody fighting in Afghanistan) gives it new
relevance, as world peace and stability are again threatened by tensions
in this volatile region of great mineral wealth and strategic significance.

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