Hussein: An Entertainment - Softcover

Patrick O'Brian's remarkable career could serve as the textbook model for a writer's life. An invalid in his childhood, he read voraciously, and produced his first novel, Caesar, at the age of 12, while his tutor wasn't looking. It was published three years later in 1930. Hussein (1938), his second novel, grew from a short story O'Brian submitted to an Oxford journal. Having been urged to expand the tale, he trotted out a thousand words a day until the book was done. Over the next eight decades, he produced more than 20 books, including the celebrated Aubrey/Maturin series on the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. In the new introduction to his first two novels (now reprinted after many years), O'Brian discloses that although he had met a few Indians, both Muslim and Hindu, he had never been to India at the time he wrote Hussein. "The book is largely derivative," he explains, "based on reading and the recollections, anecdotes and letters of friends and relations who were well acquainted with that vast country: and it has no pretension to being anything more than what it is called, an Entertainment."

A delicious blend of Kipling and the Arabian Nights, Hussein is the story of a Muslim mahout (an elephant keeper for the British Raj) whose bravery and curiosity lead him on a series of lively adventures. After a scandal involving a hated rival, a deadly curse, and a beautiful woman, Hussein is forced to leave government service and make his way as an itinerant snake charmer and storyteller. His stories open into other stories, which connect with the action of the novel, and eventually our hero finds himself in a situation in which, like Scheherazade, his life depends on how skillfully he tells his tale. Even though it isn't "the real thing" as far as nationality or cultural origins go, Hussein is most assuredly the entertainment that O'Brian promised, and the impressive early work of a natural writer. --Regina Marler

Patrick O'Brian's acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin series of historical novels has been described as "a masterpiece" (David Mamet, New York Times), "addictively readable" (Patrick T. Reardon, Chicago Tribune), and "the best historical novels ever written" (Richard Snow, New York Times Book Review), which "should have been on those lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century" (George Will).Set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, O'Brian's twenty-volume series centers on the enduring friendship between naval officer Jack Aubrey and physician (and spy) Stephen Maturin. The Far Side of the World, the tenth book in the series, was adapted into a 2003 film directed by Peter Weir and starring Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany. The film was nominated for ten Oscars, including Best Picture. The books are now available in hardcover, paperback, and e-book format.In addition to the Aubrey/Maturin novels, Patrick O'Brian wrote several books including the novels Testimonies, The Golden Ocean, and The Unknown Shore, as well as biographies of Joseph Banks and Picasso. He translated many works from French into English, among them the novels and memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir, the first volume of Jean Lacouture's biography of Charles de Gaulle, and famed fugitive Henri Cherrière's memoir Papillon. O'Brian died in January 2000.