The dream of Lhasa: The life of Nikolay Przhevalsky (1839-88) explorer of Central Asia

by Donald Rayfield

The great Russian explorer Nikolay Przhevalsky (1839-1888) made an indelible contribution to the world's atlases, and its store of zoological and botanical knowledge, as a consequence of his four arduous and dangerous expeditions through the Central Asia of Western Mongolia, Eastern Turkestan and Northern Tibet.Donald Rayfield's biography of Przhevalsky - first published in 1976 and drawing on the exporer's diaries, letters, and published works - tells the thrilling story of the explorer's groundbreaking journeys, undertaken in an age of extreme political sensitivity between Russia, China and Britain. A rich portrait emerges of an extraordinary Byronic character who was ill-suited to civilisation but much at home with the loneliness and hardship of the nomadic life. A rigorous army officer and a phenomenal shot, gifted also with a photographic memory, Przhevalsky became one of the most widely-admired men in Russia, and Rayfield adroitly explores the grounds of his reputation.

Genres: Russia, History, Biography

221 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2013

About the author

Donald Rayfield is an emeritus professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary University of London. He translated Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls and Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Stories and Sketches of the Criminal World for NYRB Classics.

Reviews

[bravebird · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only english biography I could find about Nikolay Przhevalsky. I am immensely interested in Western explorers in Inner Asia, but Russian explorers are relatively unknown to general readers like me.

This book is packed with new information that has been hard to access including his childhood, school days, military service and explorations in Inner Asia and significant incidents of the time. It was a good read that required lots of pleasant challenges to familiarize myself with names and events that shaped his life. I could not find much info on Pyotr Kozlov before, but this work also touches upon the rather dubious relationship between the two of them. Quenched much of my thirst.

[Tim Chamberlain · Rating 4 out of 5]

p.203 - "To understand Przhevalsky, we have to remove the myths in which his posterity has encased him; we have to cope with the awe, revulsion and commiseration he inspired, as did his contemporaries."

An excellent and deftly written little book. A succinct summary of what must have been a very complex life which was lived to the full, and seemingly all (or largely) on his own terms. Przhevalsky was clearly a remarkable character, driven and determined, odd and uncompromising, a monkish-sort of military disciplinarian, fantastically flawed and yet admirable in his own 'old school' 19thC explorer-like way. It seems strange he is not better known in the West, like Burton and Speke, or Stanley and Livingstone, or even Younghusband.

I wish there were a similar biography in English for Pyotr Kozlov.

[Santanu Dutta · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Dream of Lhasa, The life of Nikolai Przhevalsky...... A splendid life story.

This was his dream and he laid down his life on the way behind the dream. "He was an imperialist, spy of the Tsar.... ruthless for the cause, a name in the Great Game." But as a person of science and exploration....
Anton Chekhov says,
"One Przhevalsky or one Stanley is worth a dozen polytechnics and a hundred good books. Their loyalty to an idea, their noble ambition, whose basis is the honour of country and science, their stubbornness, their urge, undaunted by any privations, dangers or temptations of personal happiness, to reach the goal they have set... "