We know very little about Armel Gaulme, author of these notebooks  documenting Dravot and Carnehan’s journey to Kafiristan. A few handwritten scribbles attest to his French nationality, but apart from a blurred photo and a few scattered mentions, no details of his life are known. It is by an extraordinary stroke of luck that his notebooks, thought to have been lost for more than a century, are even available to us today. The story of their rediscovery is worthy of a novel in itself, but suffice it to say, four generations later, that it was a descendant of the Gaulme family, after a quest lasting nearly 10 years, who managed to get his hands on the famous documents. This descendant, ironically also called Armel, has entrusted Caurette Editions with the task of printing these precious and heretofore unpublished archives.