Peaks on the Horizon
Two Journeys in Tibet
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Charlie Carroll’s obsession began with his chance discovery of Seven Years in Tibet in the “Adult Reading” section of his grade school library. The battered hardcover with faded gold lettering sparked a twenty-year obsession with Tibet, and after combing through every book, article, and documentary on the mysterious and controversial nation, Charlie finally decided it was time to stop reading other people’s records and thoughts. A high school English teacher by then, he took a sabbatical and set out to experience the shrouded land for himself. Contending with Chinese bureaucracy, unforgiving terrain, and sickness-inducing altitude, Charlie sought entrance to twenty-first-century Tibet in all its heart-stopping beauty.
The same year Charlie was browsing library shelves, Tibetan-born Lobsang was crossing the Himalayas on foot, enduring to flee the volatile region with his family at the young age of five. An exile in Nepal with an ear for languages, then a university student in India, he followed the love of his life back to their home country, only to be separated by China’s harsh political backlash. In a teahouse at the border between China and Tibet, Lobsang met Charlie and recounted his extraordinary life story, exemplifying the hardship, resilience, and hope of modern Tibetan life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this passionate account, part memoir and part travelogue, journalist Carroll (On the Edge) documents fulfilling a lifelong dream as he journeys to Tibet to experience its mysteries and wonders. He waxes poetic about its beauty and philosophical about its treatment and exploitation by the Chinese, delving into Tibet's rich history and culture in order to shine a light on just how the country has suffered under decades of occupation and subjugation. His story is interwoven with that of Lobsang, a Tibetan national who fled with his family to Nepal when he was five years old. As Lobsang grows up, readers see the heartbreak and longing of Tibetan refugees and exiles, following Lobsang's quest to understand his homeland, which eventually leads him to attempt returning the same way he left: illegally. Lobsang's story dovetails with Carroll's as they find a mutual love of their surroundings, and a shared outrage at what Tibet has become under Chinese influence. Carroll's passion for the topic bleeds on to the pages, making this both a love letter to Tibet and a call to arms for Tibetan freedom. By adding Lobsang's tale, Carroll further humanizes the effort. While on his journey, drinking yak-butter tea and conversing with a local, Carroll is reminded of something the Dalai Lama once said: "Go to Tibet and then tell the world about it." In this engrossing and even enlightening book, Carroll meets that mandate.
