Prester John

Prester John is a 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.

South Africa, 1900. After his father dies, nineteen-year-old David Crawfurd is sent off to South Africa to earn his living as a storekeeper in the back of beyond. A strange encounter on the journey suggests that dark deeds and treacherous intrigues are afoot - all bound up with the mysterious primeval kingdom of Prester John. Written as a boys' adventure story and set mostly in South Africa (where Buchan had worked), "Prester John" was published in 1910 when Buchan was 35. It's a fast-moving thriller in the style of Robert Louis Stevenson and Rider Haggard.