Leopard and the Cliff

by Wallace Breem

A military adventure, set in India during the Afghan war of 1919.
"The Leopard and the Cliff" has been out of print for a long time with second-hand copies being elusive; nonetheless it has a grim resonance with today demonstrating the futility of fighting in that part of the world. 'Wallace Breem is a writer who never disappoints one. He has an extraordinary power of treating military disaster in depth and yet with pace, whether on the frontiers of Rome or British India, and of analyzing the tensions of command. Gripping as an action story, deeply moving on the individual level, it involves one as an eye-witness from beginning to end' - Mary Renault. 'I found the book gripping. I am not a Frontier man but the account of the tribal situation on the Frontier and of the atmosphere accords with all I have read or heard about it. The author brings out movingly and with skill several points of vital importance to an understanding of British India and the Frontier in particular. Everything depended on India (in this case Pathan) co-operation; this broke down once the British showed lack of confidence and began to retire. The clash of loyalties which then arose was highly dramatic and painful for those involved. The loneliness of such a man as Sandeman is also brought out with skill' - Philip Mason, author of "A Matter of Honour: An Account of the Indian Army, Its Officers and Men".

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Military Fiction

285 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Wallace Wilfred Swinburne Breem was a British librarian and author, the Librarian and Keeper of Manuscripts of the Inner Temple Law Library at his death, but perhaps more widely known for his historical novels, including the classic Eagle in the Snow (1970).

At the age of 18, Breem entered the Indian Army's Officers Training School, and in 1945 was commissioned as an officer of the Corps of Guides, an elite Cavalry detachment of the North West Frontier Force.

After the Partition of India in 1947, Breem returned to England and held a variety of jobs which included labourer in a tannery, assistant to a veterinary surgeon, and rent-collector in the East End of London. He eventually joined the library staff of the Inner Temple in London, in 1950.

Breem was a founder member of BIALL (British and Irish Association of Law Librarians), and at various times held the offices of Secretary, Treasurer, Chairman, Vice-President, and President in that organization.

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

My review's short, since I read it over a year ago. I enjoyed this dispassionate look at Afghanistan and fight with the British in 1919, through the eyes of a British Indian Army officer. It was depressing, eventually tragic, but eye-opening, showing the ineffectiveness of outsiders fighting in that hostile terrain. The tribesmen hate and resent outsiders. This novel is another of Breem's that drips with his mood of futility. The title derives from an Afghan saying with the meaning of 'Between Scylla and Charybdis' or 'Between a rock and a hard place'. There are hard choices to be made, in this novel.

[DoctorM · Rating 4 out of 5]

A finely-crafted, coldly realistic, and tragic military tale. There on the Afghan frontier in 1919, a unit of the British Indian army must retreat from an exposed outpost while tribal loyalties fray and the landscape becomes increasingly hostile. Breem served on the Afghan frontier at the end of the 1940s, in the last days of the Raj, and he knows the countryside and the tribes first-hand. His hero is I rather think much like Breem himself--- an intellectual who is still a professional soldier (Breem was later law librarian at one of the Inns of Court in London). His hero is a man aware of how he must carry an increasing burden as his fellow British officers are picked off one by one and his Pathan soldiers desert, a quiet, thoughtful man determined to get his surviving loyal native troops to safety in an increasingly hopeless situation.

It would be too easy to link Breem's Afghanistan 1919 to the same landscape in 2010, and I'll avaoid that. I'll just say that this is a fine and powerful book that bears reading for its own sake.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is ultimately a fairly depressing read, as the (near) futility of a retreat from isolated forts in Waziristan during the brief Anglo-Afghan War of 1919 and the resulting sacrifice of men and animals maintained a sombre mood in an always engaging story based on a real incident. Sandeman, a pensive, intellectual, rather unsuccessful officer leads the retreat making mistakes and reviewing his life as the few fellow British officers die around him and men desert. Keeping track of tribal affiliations was challenging, but it is a powerful novel

[Abby Schwartz · Rating 3 out of 5]

English try to colonize Afghanistan.

[Andre' Thibodeaux · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hated the ending… but wow. What an incredible journey this book was.

[Alfonso Alvarez de Mon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un oficial militar inglés en la India a principios del siglo XX se encuentra en medio de un levantamiento de las tribus fronterizas con Afganistán y se ve obligado a una retirada casi imposible.
La novela me resultó un poco difícil de leer, sobre todo al principio, porque hay mucho nombre propio, mucho vocabulario local y las frecuentes e importantes referencias geográficas son difíciles de entender.
Me gustó mucho la sobriedad con la que narra y la atmósfera que consigue crear.