Prester John Annotated

<p>Prester John is a 1910 adventure novel by the Scottish author John Buchan. It tells the story of a young Scotsman named David Crawfurd and his adventures in South Africa, where a Zulu uprising under the charismatic black minister John Laputa is tied to the medieval legend of Prester John. This was Buchan's sixth published novel, but the first to reach a wide readership, establishing him as a writer of fast-paced adventures in exotic locales. He drew the background from his two-year stint in South Africa (1901-1903) as political private secretary to Lord Milner, High Commissioner for Southern Africa, in what came to be known as Milner's Young Men or Milner's Kindergarten. It was in South Africa he gained a feeling for the man of action and the sense of adventure, as well as practical, political training. The setting is contemporaneous with the publication: the beginning of the twentieth century. Crawfurd grows up in Kirkcaple, by the North Sea, where he first encounters the antagonist, Laputa, performing a ritual on the beach. Crawfurd's father dies, and he goes to work as a shopkeeper in a place called Blaauwildebeestefontein. Crawfurd comes into contact with a Portuguese man, Henriques, and again with Laputa, and he gradually learns of illegal diamond smuggling and of a planned rising of the native people of the region, including the Zulu people and the Swazi people, led by Laputa. Laputa's skill as a preacher allows him to inspire many tribes across the region to follow him, and he invokes the legend of Prester John and positions himself as the rightful heir and leader who can rise up against colonial rule. Crawfurd learns more about this after meeting Captain Arcoll, who leads the colonial army and police.</p>