'Not all lost cities are real, but this one was.' The extraordinary story of Alexander the Great's lost city, and a quest to unravel one of the most captivating mysteries in ancient history. 'Superb . impeccably researched, but with the pace and deftly woven plot complexity of a John le Carré novel ... utterly brilliant ' William Dalrymple, Guardian '[An] exceptional biography ... This is a jewel of a book ' Sunday Times 'A brilliant and evocative biography, written with consummate scholarship, great style and wit ' Daily Telegraph __ For centuries the city of Alexandria Beneath the Mountains was a meeting point of East and West. Then it vanished. In 1833 it was discovered in Afghanistan by the unlikeliest person imaginable: Charles Masson, an ordinary working-class boy from London turned deserter, pilgrim, doctor, archaeologist and highly respected scholar. On the way into one of history's most extraordinary stories, Masson would take tea with kings, travel with holy men and become the master of a hundred disguises; he would see things no westerner had glimpsed before and few have glimpsed since. He would spy for the East India Company and be suspected of spying for Russia at the