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Review
'A marvellous book, well researched and beautifully written - a treat for armchair explorers everywhere'
(New Statesman )'As vivid and gripping as a John Buchan novel'
(Evening Standard )Product Description
No other land has captured man's imagination quite like Tibet. Hidden away behind the highest mountains on earth, and ruled over by a mysterious God-king, it was for centuries a land forbidden to all outsiders.
In this remarkable and ultimately tragic narrative, Peter Hopkirk recounts the forcible opening up of this medieval Buddhist kingdom by inquisitive Western travellers during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the race to reach Lhasa, Tibet's sacred capital.
This epic, often harrowing tale, which ends with the Chinese invasion of 1950, draws on a colourful cast of gatecrashers from nine different countries. Among them were adventurous young officers on Great Game missions, explorers and mountaineers, mystics and missionaries. All took their lives in their hands, including three intrepid women. Some were never to return.
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In the heart of Central Asia, buttressed by the highest mountains on earth, soars the immense natural fortress of Tibet. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Some of the other customer reviews have been luke-warm about the book, but in its defence it is not a book about Tibet, Tibetans or religion - it is exactly what it claims to be, i.e. a series of fascinating stories of western adventurers (plus one Japanese!) told to different levels of detail depending on the merits and information available of each adventurer's journey.
I have to say that I am a big Peter Hopkirk fan so I must disclose my obvious bias here. However, for those that are familiar with some of his other works, I would rate this book alongside his 'The Great Game' and I found that, as a read, it flowed even better than his (very good) works 'Setting the East Ablaze' and 'On Secret Service East of Constantinople'.
Stripped to basics, these are adventure stories: Somerset Maugham meets John Buchan. But in detail they are revealed often as accounts of immense courage in overwhelmingly forbidding circumstances, sometimes of almost unbelievable foolhardiness. Remarkably but perhaps not surprisingly, virtually everyone who made the attempt wrote about it afterwards. Hopkirk has read the books, feretted among the official archives, travelled the area himself. The narrative is vivid and anecdotal but there is enough political and historical background to establish context. If the voice is the voice of Empire it is at least authentic.
The reservation of other readers that this book does not look at the trespassers from the point of view of the Tibetans would only be valid if the author had set out to provide a rounded account. But that is matter for other writers with other perspectives. Peter Hopkirk unashamedly sets out to tell the many stories of those who attempted - and mostly failed - to penetrate the forbidden kingdom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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