"Brings the nineteenth century to life, with its attendant disease, violence, and colonial machinations.”—Jewish Book Council
“In Rovner's deeply researched biography, the adventurer's swashbuckling memoirs are. . . . a crowbar of sorts, used to pry open a window onto an era of possibility, prejudice and burgeoning colonial avarice.”—NPR
This vivid reconstruction of one man’s life reveals the harsh realities and moral ambiguities of colonial power.
The Jew Who Would Be King tells the story of Nathaniel Isaacs—a nineteenth-century British Jew who helped establish the Zulu kingdom only to become a ruthless warlord and slaveholder. Isaacs’ thrilling journey begins with his shipwreck on the shores of Zululand and proceeds to ports across West Africa, including Freetown, Sierra Leone. There, tasked by the colonial governor to end the local slave trade, Isaacs brokered deals that reinforced his own power.
Adam Rovner's meticulous archival research in England, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and St. Helena, coupled with his own travels to the remnants of Isaacs’ island stronghold in Guinea, brings this complex figure to life. Through Isaacs’ story, Rovner exposes the entangled forces of Jewish emancipation and antisemitism, slavery and abolition, the stark dichotomies of civilization and “savagery,” and the creation of whiteness versus Blackness.
Adam Rovner is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver. He is author of the acclaimed In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel.
"This astonishing story of a British Jewish adventurer who made an unlikely career for himself on Africa's colonial frontier doubles as a searching inquiry into the ways that slavery, sexism, racism, and antisemitism shaped Victorian society. A dazzling achievement."—Dane Kennedy, author of The Highly Civilized Man: Richard Burton and the Victorian World
“Inspired, entertaining, and thoroughly unsentimental, The Jew Who Would Be King is a masterwork about the turbulent life of a heretofore neglected nineteenth-century personage. A veritable page-turner.”—Nathan P. Devir, author of New Children of Israel: Emerging Jewish Communities in an Era of Globalization
“A British Jew sent as a child to St. Helena, who became a voyager and warrior and even king of his own island off the African coast. It seems all too much and yet! This exquisitely written book reveals the real, complex life of a Jew in the modern world."—Sander L. Gilman, author of Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews
“With mesmerizing prose and an epic plot, The Jew Who Would Be King recreates the astounding life of a Jewish adventurer worthy of the silver screen. Adam Rovner proves a nimble tour guide through this powerful portrait of race, empire, and insatiable ambition.”—Andrew Porwancher, author of The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton
“In this unusual and fascinating book, Rovner finds traces of Jewish history in places where few have thought to search. Beautifully written and difficult to put down, this book casts light on the relations between Africans, colonists, and traders in the first half of the nineteenth century and describes how a Jew, neither Black nor white, navigated these complex societies.”—Tudor Parfitt, author of Black Jews in Africa and the Americas
344 pp.6 x 9Illus: 16 b/w figures, 9 b/w maps
9780520403000$32.95|£28.00Hardcover
Apr 2025