Nineteen-year-old David Crawfurd travels from Scotland to South Africa to work as a storekeeper. On the voyage he encounters again John Laputa, the celebrated Zulu minister, of whom he has strange memories. In his remote store David finds himself with the key to a massive uprising led by the minister, who has taken the title of the mythical priest-king, Prester John. David's courage and his understanding of this man take him to the heart of the uprising, a secret cave in the Rooirand. John Buchan wrote Prester John, his sixth novel, in 1910, seven years after he returned from South Africa. It was his first to reach a wide readership across the world, and it established him as the writer of the fast-paced adventures for which he is famous. In this, the only critical edition, David Daniell shows what went into the making of Prester John and explores what sets it apart from the boys' yarns of the period.