author
Charles Neufeld
1856–1918
Best known for his vivid memoir of captivity in Sudan, this German-born merchant turned a harrowing twelve-year ordeal into a firsthand adventure narrative. His writing offers listeners a rare window into Omdurman and the Mahdist era at the end of the nineteenth century.
2 Audiobooks
Under the Rebel's Reign
by Charles Neufeld
A Prisoner of the Khaleefa: Twelve Years Captivity at Omdurman
by Charles Neufeld
About the author
Born Karl Otto Neufeld on August 4, 1856, in West Prussia, he later published in English as Charles Neufeld. He was a German merchant who became deeply involved in trade in Sudan during a turbulent period in the late nineteenth century.
Neufeld is remembered above all for the years he spent imprisoned by the Mahdist state after being captured in 1885. He was eventually freed in 1898 after the British victory at Omdurman, and he transformed that experience into his best-known book, A Prisoner of the Khaleefa: Twelve Years' Captivity at Omdurman.
That memoir made him notable not just as a witness to extraordinary events, but as a writer whose account blended survival story, travel narrative, and historical observation. He died on July 2, 1918, leaving behind a work that still draws readers interested in empire, conflict, and life inside a world few outsiders ever saw so closely.