A seasoned traveller fluent in Persian, Burnes considers himself well-versed in dealing with oriental potentates, but is floored by the intelligence and depth of Dost Mohammad, who constantly peppers him with questions regarding the outside world.

In London, the beautiful ingenue Bella Garraway accompanies her opium addict of a father to a dinner party at the mansion of aging socialite Lady Woodcourt.

As the evening wears on he interacts with Stokes, a disagreeable newspaper editor professing an anti-imperialism outlook who deplores the jingoistic sentiments Burnes's book has generated among readers.

Suspecting the foreigner of espionage on account of his incessant information-gathering, the Afghan emir orders the courtier Khushhal to send his son Hassan to insinuate himself into the mystery man's household.

The story then shifts to the Crimea, where widowed landowner Nikolai Mikhailovich Layevsky welcomes back his son Pavel from a five-year-long stint in the army.

A terminally impolite eccentric who gives off a perpetual air of sullen insouciance, Vitkevich is not only a favourite of the Russian royal family, but also an object of adoration by his fellow officers.

Bella's transformation into a recluse is officially ascribed to ill health, though the actual reason is her having birthed Burnes's son out of wedlock, a fact she keeps secret from the father of her child.

An indecisive and malleable bachelor who routinely demonstrates his personal power by making his entourage wait, Auckland intimates to the Sikh ruler that their two countries should jointly declare war on Dost Mohammad.

Burnes does eventually learn of Vitkevich's mission in Kabul one day when Dost Mohammad asks him to ascertain the veracity of an official Russia letter offering a military alliance.

She is temporarily left to her own devices as Lord John goes to mingle with the rest of the crowd, during which time she is accosted by Stokes, whose standing in society has gone up, as has his expenses (it no longer being appropriate for him to be seen commuting on foot and not by carriage, for example,).

Lord John returns and takes the pair to see the latest acquisition of his antiquities-collecting father, an ancient parchment bearing a single Greek letter that the old duke has been led to believe to be a fragment of a poem by Sappho.

Housed in a military cantonment outside of the city, the British army occupying Kabul finds itself in a state of constant boredom, its officers having to put up with a never-ending series of dull formal dinners hosted by their wives.

Burnes is ultimately betrayed by the servant, who turns out to be the same Hassan Masson had bedded, and the crowd descend upon him, leaving his mutilated remains to be consumed by the city's stray dogs.

[2] Toby Young, writing for The Guardian, praised the book for being "a great deal of fun" but deplored the lack of a plot, noting that "the story plays second fiddle to the literary high jinks" and that Hensher should have more carefully studied the authors he was parodying for a more compelling narrative.

[3] A review in The New York Times by Jason Goodwin was more charitable, describing the novel as a work that "hovers close to brilliance", its observations "acute" and characters "beautifully drawn".