Achmed Abdullah (1881-1945) claimed to have been born in Afghanistan, sometimes to a father who was the governor of Kabul, sometimes to a cousin of Tsar Nicholas II. He invented a school career at Eton, Oxford, Berlin, Paris, and Cairo, said he was raised in Islam but was a devout Catholic. He allegedly fought in the Boxer Rebellion in China, served in the British army in Tibet and Africa, and was elevated to the rank of pasha in the Ottoman army in 1914. As a spy for His Majesty, he was supposedly caught by the Germans, narrowly escaping the firing squad. After emigrating to New York, he published around fifty pulp stories (detective, adventure, disaster novels) from 1915 to 1939. From 1920 to 1935, he was also a screenwriter for Hollywood (Henry Hathaway, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, 1935), where his turban, small mustache, and bow tie were legendary. Only three of his novels have been translated into French, including A Perfect Gentleman (1919) and The Trail of the Beast (1929).
