---
product_id: 55848573
title: "The Tartan Turban: In Search of Alexander Gardner Paperback – February 15, 2018"
brand: "john keay"
price: "1248 kr"
currency: ISK
in_stock: false
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.is/products/55848573-the-tartan-turban-in-search-of-alexander-gardner-paperback-february
store_origin: IS
region: Iceland
---

# The Tartan Turban: In Search of Alexander Gardner Paperback – February 15, 2018

**Brand:** john keay
**Price:** 1248 kr
**Availability:** ❌ Out of Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** The Tartan Turban: In Search of Alexander Gardner Paperback – February 15, 2018 by john keay
- **How much does it cost?** 1248 kr with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Currently out of stock
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.is](https://www.desertcart.is/products/55848573-the-tartan-turban-in-search-of-alexander-gardner-paperback-february)

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- john keay enthusiasts

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## Description

Full description not available

## Images

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Keay uses Gardner's story to illuminate a violent and lawless world
  

*by L***N on Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2018*

Alexander Gardner was a mysterious and controversial figure.  How much of his story was made-up and how much real can never be known.  John Keay retells the story as well as it can be pieced together, sharing with the reader the historian's challenges in putting the fragments of evidence together, and restoring Gardner's story, mostly, from debunking by earlier historians.  This aspect of the book is somewhat like Hopkirk's excellent book The Quest for Kim.  Keay uses the story of Gardner to illuminate the violent and lawless world of the Punjab, Afghanistan and Central Asia in the early 19th Century.  Keay, through Gardner's first hand observations, shows the almost unbelievable self-destruction of the Sikh Empire, due to a power struggle among its leadership, which dissolved into a bloodbath of assassinations.  With an aggressively expanding British presence on the Sikh frontier, ready to pounce at any sign of weakness, this was nothing short of national suicide.  Even so, the Sikh empire was the greatest enemy Britain faced in Asia until the Japanese in World War II.  If you have an interest in the Great Game, the British in India, the Sikh Empire, Fraser's Flashman novels, or the writing of Peter Hopkirk, you will enjoy this book.

### ⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Moralistic.
  

*by J***W on Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2020*

I wanted to like this book but couldn't.Keay spends far too much time describing physical violence in prissy, distasteful, moral terms. i'm not trying to say this book is weak, but it seems to me, that at the very least, Gardner was a very hard guy existing in a world where physical violence was not immoral. I'll stress that: I didn't say 'not considered immoral', I said it 'wasn't immoral'. Keay spends so much time inserting words of apparently his own moral judgement, it genuinely ruined the book for me. I'm not sure who he was directing his book towards, to waste so much time describing commonplace acts as... let's see... 'vicious', 'murderous', 'horrific carnage', 'monstrous', 'repulsive', despicable', 'grievous', etc. You get the idea.Much of the rest of the writing is turgid.It's a shame, the subject is fascinating, but man, this is, in my opinion, a bad book.

### ⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Interesting attempt to convey story...
  

*by D***H on Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2020*

I can't say that it is not worth reading as author is clear that it is a compellation of facts and story telling recorded in a narrative.  It does discuss a time and era of history that is not readily studied nor was it recorded accurately by the oral cultures in which it took place.  As challenging as it was...so is this book.  It doesn't particularly flow and leaves a lot of the base cultural understanding or time line of battles and leaders to the reader to know without much explanation to the backdrop by the author of this text.  I feel a better job could have been done to give more historical depth to this man's tale then is achieved here.

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*Product available on Desertcart Iceland*
*Store origin: IS*
*Last updated: 2026-01-30*