Rice E. Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton

New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons , 1990. — 704 p.The Secret Agent Who Made the Pilgrimage to Mecca, Discovered the Kama Sutra and Brought the Arabian Nights to the West
A NY Times bestseller when first published, Rice's biography is the gripping story of a fierce, magnetic and brilliant man whose real-life accomplishments are the stuff of legend. Rice retraces Burton's steps as the first European adventurer to search for the source of the Nile; to enter, disguised, the forbidden cities of Mecca and Medina; and to travel thru remote stretches of India, the Near East and Africa. From his spying exploits to his startling literary accomplishments (the discovery and translation of the Kama Sutra and his 17-volume translation of Arabian Nights), Burton was an engrossing, larger-than-life Victorian figure. Rice's biography lays open a portrayal as dramatic, complicated and compelling as the man himself.