For nearly a century the two most powerful nations on earth - Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia - fought a secret war in the lonely passes and deserts of Central Asia. Those engaged in this shadowy struggle called it 'The Great Game', a phrase immortalized in Kipling's Kim.

When play first began the two rival empires lay nearly 2,000 miles apart. By the end, some Russian outposts were within 20 miles of India.

This classic book tells the story of the Great Game through the exploits of the young officers, both British and Russian, who risked their lives playing it. Disguised as holy men or native horse-traders, they mapped secret passes, gathered intelligence and sought the allegiance of powerful khans. Some never returned. The violent repercussions of the Great Game are still convulsing Central Asia today.

Peter Hopkirk has travelled widely over many years in the regions where his six books are set --- Central Asia, the Caucasus, China, India and Pakistan, Iran and Eastern Turkey. Before turning full-time author, he was an ITN reporter and newscaster for two years, the New York correspondent of the old Daily Express, and worked for nearly twenty years on The Times; five as its chief reporter, and latterly as Middle and Far East specialist. In the 1950s he edited the West African news magazine Drum, sister paper to its legendary South African namesake. Before entering Fleet Street he served as a subaltern in the King's African Rifles --- in the same battalion as Lance Corporal Idi Amin, later to emerge as the Ugandan tyrant. No stranger to misadventure, Hopkirk has twice been held in secret-police cells --- in Cuba and the Middle East --- and also been hijacked by Arab terrorists. His works have been translated into fourteen languages. In 1999 he was awarded the Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal for his writing and travels by the Royal Society for Asian Affairs.