Tulku

by Peter Dickinson

A thirteen-year-old boy escapes from slaughter by the Boxers in China and joins forces with an English botanist and her escort, traveling with them to Tibet where the power of Buddhist monks transforms the lives of all of them.

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical, Travel, Childrens

286 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Peter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson OBE FRSL was a prolific English author and poet, best known for children's books and detective stories.

Peter Dickinson lived in Hampshire with his second wife, author Robin McKinley. He wrote more than fifty novels for adults and young readers. He won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Award twice, and his novel The Blue Hawk won The Guardian Award in 1975.

Reviews

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've just read it for the third time. Perhaps that should make me an expert on the book, but reading it at intervals of 19 years meant that I don't remember much from one reading to the next.

Theodore Tewker, orphaned 13-year-old son of an American missionary in China, meets up with an Englishwoman who is collecting botanical specimens. They travel together to Tibet (which at that time was independent of China) and spend some time at a Buddhist monastery. That much I remember from two readings, and I could have learnt it from the blurb. So it was like reading it for the first time.

I've read other books by Peter Dickinson, and as with this one, I find it had to remember the plot. The others were children's books, and I remember that one of them was about Merlin, and that it reminded me a bit of That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis, which I have also read several times, but in that case I remember the plot pretty well. So that is an interesting phenomenon. I re-read C.S. Lewis's books, even though I am familiar with the plot, for the small details and nuances that I may have missed on previous readings. One such in That Hideous Strength was a passing reference to Cecil Rhodes -- see That hideous strength and Rhodes must fall | Khanya.

But Tulku I re-read not for the finer details, but because I had forgotten the broad outlines of the plot. I would like to re-read some of Dickinson's other children's books, but neither bookshop nor library seems to have them.

Tulku isn't exactly a children's book, though the protagonist, Theodore, is a child bang in the middle of puberty. At least it doesn't feel like a children's book. If my recollections of being that age are accurate, then I suppose my thought processes were pretty similar to Theodore's, but I didn't really take much time to reflect on my thought processes, and reading this book at age 13 would lay on me the demand that I did.

The other day a 13-year-old asked a question on the question-and-answer web site Quora, saying that he preferred to read adult books and found children's books boring. And I dare say he might have found Tulku boring too. When I was 13 I read an "adult" book, The Wages of Fear by Georges Arnaud. I found it was gripping stuff, and made me think I wanted to be a lorry driver when I grew up. I wanted to see the film, but it had an age restriction -- no persons 4-16 -- but I persuaded my mother to take me to see it, and pretended I was 16. It wasn't quite as thrilling as the book, and I was mystified by the age restriction. But my comment to the 13-year-old who found children's books boring was that he might enjoy them more when he was older. And I suspect that that may be the case with Tulku.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

The very best of Dickinson's work. I wonder if he was inspired by Rudyard Kipling's Kim. There are parallels - a journey, a chela and guru, a fascinating look at Tibetan Buddhism - but then he throws in the delightful Mrs. Jones, a British plant collector and a character of great charm and originality. Her unlikely romance with Lung, her Chinese guide, ends in a most unexpected and satisfying way. A memorable book.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book won both the Carnegie Medal and Whitbread Children's award in 1979, and I feel like children's stories have really changed and become less challenging since then.
This is a great, but not easy, read. In some ways its more like a adult book than children's or young adult.
The protagonist questions his Christian faith after his settlement is attacked and he is forced to flee, but he also explores (not entirely voluntarily) Tibetan Buddhism, questioning the nature of reality, reincarnation, and his own spiritual experiences.
Great stuff, but I can't imagine any of the young people I know enjoying this book. Sadly, they'd all rather scroll incessantly through short form social media or read . Oh God, now I sound like an old person: "Back in my day we had more mental fortitude and intellectual curiosity. Kids these days are rotting their brains on TikTok."
I don't know if Peter Dickinson travelled to Tibet but the descriptions are rich and ring true (from my small amount of travelling in the area and documentaries). I've left Tulku feeling like maybe I travelled to Tibet myself.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other reviewers are comparing this to other works by the author, other award-winning books, other books about religion, their own guesses of what teens will read, their own perceptions about the Orient and about Eastern & Christian religions.... I give this book four stars because I believe it to be worthy of four stars when judged on its own merits.

I do agree that it seems almost like two books. It is long, and for the first part it is adventure. As the characters get to know each other, and we them, it's a 'man against nature' quest. When our three travelers reach Tibet, it gets philosophical. It is *not* vague or rambling - reviewers who say that must have been reading while tired, or while distracted. It *is* provocative.

Some might label it historical fiction, as it does take place in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion, and does talk a bit about Chinese and Tibetan politics. I wish it had said more - I did not learn enough history from this... and I'm about burnt out on historical fiction. In fact, I'm not sure the particular monastery named is real. Iow, I wouldn't put this in that genre. It's literature or adventure.

It's also gracefully written - the people and the mountains feel entirely real, the pages keep turning, the ending makes sense with all that's gone before but it's not predictable... a good book. Should not be overlooked.

I do note, in my public library, that books for MG tend longer than those for YA. Teens have more going on in their lives, and 10-13 year-olds can focus better and are more curious? In any case, this is a book for all ages 14 and up -- maybe as young as 11 if the family is not shy of references to adultery and idolatry and the child is a good reader.

[Mathew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely one for KS3 or above as the reading is challenging in terms of its writing and style but the story is excellent and, as you would expect with Dickinson, rich in figurative language, a sense of self and identity and a world so well-crafted that you walk within it.
Tulku is a historical novel set in China which won Dickinson is Whitbred Award and the Carneige. It feels like a long read but you cannot deny its craftsmanship and story.

[Hertog · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad but I couldn’t really get into it for some reason.. maybe it’s just not my style. And the book ended two pages too late...

[Daisy May Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

When you are having a time of it, I think you don't really read what you're reading. You perform a semblance of reading; you mimic the gestures that you have learned and performed for years now, most likely, because the muscle memory gets you through, but the page stays somehow distant from your reading of it. You are acquaintances at some formal function; a distant, vaguely familiar face that you know from somewhere and can't quite figure out where, but then the thing - the pressing, big thing, that has been pulling you away from the word, the page, from everything, really, comes back to you and you are powerless to resist it.

And so the books are read; the library loans are returned, more are picked up because that's what you do (it's what we all do, we read in hope of what's to come) and yet the more you do it, the more distant it becomes because the thing is all about you and it's starting to even push the page away and you're nothing but at its mercy by now, because you're tired and you've only got so much inside of you, and so you let it and the book slides away from you just that little bit more; that face becomes somebody you thought you once knew, a memory but then, not even that, not even an itch of a memory but just a gentle, soft skip in the day that you register vaguely, softly, before moving on, before returning to the thing, before looking for the light within it, before looking.

And when it gets to that point, when you know the light is there but it's just not coming soon enough, when frustration starts to set in, you make space. You clear the decks, scour the surfaces and make it clean for something else yet to come, you look at the pile of books by your bed and send half of them to the charity shop bag because it's been months and things aren't going to change now are they, and the other half you start to read through. Some you discount in a handful of pages (for we have no time for that and even less inclination) and some you read all the way through out of sheer orneriness and then all of a sudden, there's the one that you try once, twice, and it doesn't work, and for a moment it hovers over the bag, before you try it one last time.

And realise it's probably the best thing you've read in months, maybe even all year.

There's these moments in it, these little physical moments of realisation, and they feel like a little poke in your shoulder, a reminder that amidst everything, amidst all of the things and the noise and the world, that stories, that language, can still do this. That people still have these kind of stories within them, that they are yet to be discovered and that you are discovering one right now. That you are reading passages that, when you are done, make you go back to trace the curve of the sentence and watch the light little twist of movement when you least expect it.

You try to rationalise it: this is a simple story of adventure set during the Boxer Rebellion. A boy loses his family (this is no spoiler, this is children's literature) and finds another. They travel towards Tibet and then there is everything, all of a sudden, on the page. Religion. Philosophy. Grief. Hope. Fear. Family. Shades of everything in between. And all of it is so distinctly itself that it makes you genuinely envious of it, that you want to almost eat it, that you kind of want to unpick it as if it is some great piece of tapestry and that by examining each thread that's part of it, you might figure out how it does what it does.

This is writing, then, where everybody is endlessly memorable, their personality stamped upon the page, a gun toting botanist, her lover, a fatherless boy; it's Kipling and adventure but then all of a sudden it's this big and brilliant exploration of faith and belief and how to think about the world that you're in and it's so breathtakingly confident and able and deft that you kind of feel it in your stomach every time it happens and every time it does, you think: this, this is the light, this.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

An adventure story set in China and Tibet during the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901). In rural south-west China, a Christian settlement is attacked and a 13-year-old boy, son of the missionary who founded the settlement, is left by himself. He encounters Mrs Jones, a charismatic English botanist, and starts out on a journey which takes him to the high mountain fastness of Tibet.

The book is billed as children’s’ fiction, and it won two prestigious children’s’ fiction prizes, and whilst the action and themes seem at first quite adult, they do focus on the things a child of this age comes up against, whether they are thrown into such an extreme and dangerous situation or not. On the journey, Mrs Jones and her Chinese porter become lovers, testing further the Christian values Theodore begins to question after the settlement is attacked. What child of Theodor’s age, brought up to religion, doesn’t start to question that religion, and doesn’t start to notice and to think about sex?

Theodore’s beliefs come under further strain within the Buddhist culture the travellers encounter in Tibet. Mrs Jones and the porter conceive a child, and the lama of the monastery believes this child carries the soul of another lama who went missing, and whom they have been seeking. This child is called the ‘Tulku’, hence the novel’s title.

Tulku is a strange and unique mix of adventure, religion and love story. I enjoyed it very much. What stands out the most is the clash of religions and Mrs Jones, with her grammatically incorrect Cockney speech, her intelligence and her ability to play a part. She is a formidable character and quite a feat of literary creation.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thirteen year old Theo is hiding in the woods due to the destruction of his father's mission. His father is dead. Theo is on escaping from the Chinese rebels of the Boxer uprising. Mrs Jones, a botanist takes Theo with her. There are bandits that are attacking them when a Buddhist monk stops it. The monk has been looking fort heir spiritual master Tulku to lead them. He insists that Theo is that person or maybe Mrs. Jones unborn baby. Theo has a conflict with his Christian belief and Buddhism belief. Will he be able to resolve this?

The author writes a historical novel that is also about religious beliefs. It's a fascinating novel. Many incidents occur that surprise Theo. He must make sense of this and stand on his own two feet.

Disclaimer: I received an arc of this book free from the author/publisher from Net-galley. I was not obliged to write a favorable review, or even any review at all. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.

[Sachin Kaushik · Rating 1 out of 5]

i didnt understand this book, what was the author trying to say ,the book is full of description of the path and the land which i found hard to follow, they were in mountains, then plain then another mountains, then a barren land, in the snow clad mountains, i dont know. also the characters, i dodnt understand any, Theodore - what did he make out of it all in the end? i didnt understand. and i didnt like Mrs Jones, yes she was independent, intelligent and able to take quick decision but somehow i foudn her arrogant. And what to say of Lung. i only found Lama Amchi a bit easy to follow. the end too didnt make any sense.

[Daniel Peters · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as a boy of 12 or 13, in the nineties, when the “Free Tibet” movement was getting some traction.
Gave an insight into historical Tibet and Buddhism as well as the events of the Boxer Rebellion.
History is always more fun to learn on the backdrop of unlikely heroes, swashbuckling adventures and slight supernatural fantasy - even if not exactly accurate.

[Mckinley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't really like this one that much. I think it was the writing style since the topics and ideas are interesting. Young boy sorting through religion, Buddhism, woman botanist seeking new plants.

[Bob Cummings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great novel sent the pics the times well researched

[liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was great!

[William Leight · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a rather unusual book, a late-Victorian boy's own adventure of an American boy and a British woman trying to survive in darkest China, but with a few twists that the book would certainly not have had were it written in 1893. For one thing, although the dangers are all non-white -- roving bands of Boxers, backcountry bandits, theocratic Tibetans -- our heroic band of three is half non-white as well: Theodore's father was an American missionary, but his mother was a Chinese convert, and he spends much of the book passing for a Chinese boy. Just as important is Lung: he is introduced as Miss Jones's guide but it quickly becomes clear that he is considerably more than that, and his affair with Miss Jones ends up driving most of the action. Miss Jones herself is clearly the center of everything: it's her strength of will (and occasionally, her quick trigger finger) that gives the group its direction and enables it to get as far as it does. Further, rather than Theodore's Christian faith carrying him serenely through his confrontation with the heathen Tibetans, Theodore finds himself questioning his faith, perhaps not unreasonably given the destruction of his father's mission and the death of his father and indeed essentially everyone Theodore has ever known. In fact, his time in the monastery of Dong Pe actually helps him refind his faith, although it may not be exactly the same as it once was. The depiction of the monks of Dong Pe is particularly strong: their powers are, quite clearly, real, and the lama is both a politician scheming to preserve his monastery's independence from the Chinese and the government in Lhasa and a genuine holy man. And in the end, our heroes don't succeed in thwarting the monks: indeed, Miss Jones has more or less joined them, although she is clearly sufficiently formidable to challenge the lama one-on-one. As a standard-issue adventure, the book would probably be slightly racist and more than a little boring, but by tweaking the tropes of the adventure novel, Dickinson produces a thoroughly enjoyable story.

[J K · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good story, one I wasn't expecting to get into. The writing is a little simplistic but the story is full of adventure and deals with repercussions of adult relationships and prejudices between and within religions and cultures. It was an absorbing take on the reincarnation theory of Tibetan monks and what faith actually means. I do wonder if the English woman is as happy as she makes out in the end, and what that means for the protagonist in the end. Definitely an intriguing read, very thoughtful and approachably spiritual without being, I felt, especially preachy or in favour of one particular answer. From what I remember, this story was ambiguous about both and left it to the individual characters to choose where they placed the fate of their lives and their souls.

[MAB LongBeach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thirteen-year-old Theodore Tewker is the only survivor of a Boxer attack on his father's mission Settlement. Alone in rural China, he falls in with a botanist and her servant/translator. Although Theodore finds Mrs. Jones to be crude and blasphemous, he comes to like and admire her anyway. The three of them travel across China, dodging bandits, eventually heading across the border into Tibet. There they meet a lama who is searching for the reincarnated Tulku and believes that Theodore might be the one. So they find themselves at a monastery, not quite prisoners, and taking instruction in Buddhism, much to Theodore's disquiet.

Exciting and thought-provoking, with compelling characters and no easy answers. Written as YA, but well worth attention by adults.

Now available as an ebook.

[Elizabeth LaPrelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dickinson would make it into my top 5 writers if I had a top 5. He has an uncanny gift for narrative voice and absolute believability. His genius lies somewhere in his writing as a naive narrator--there are gaps that will never be filled in. This makes his universes all the more complete and satisfying. I think Peter Dickinson is what magical realism wishes it could be.
I recommend Tulku highly as young adult fare for those who dig historical fiction. If Eastern religion is not your bag, you probably won't care about it.

[Kathryn McCary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some powerful Dickinson themes here--the charismatic missionary, and the charismatic missionary's child (first seen in The Glass-Sided Ant's Nest), the nature of religious belief and experience, the girl raised in poverty who becomes a lady--in her own way, and on her own terms. Some utterly unforgettable characters--Lung, Mrs. Jones, Major Price-Owens. And a breathtaking journey through China and Tibet. . .and on to England. A great Himalayan adventure saga in pure Dickinsonian.

[Kristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book in primary school, one of my teachers brought it in for me because I had exhausted the supply of books at the school. For the first time I got completely enthralled in a story.

Maybe if I re-read it now I might be disappoiinted, I hope I'm not as if I find a copy somewhere I will read it again.

[Amber Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book I read years ago and enjoyed. If you've read about Alexandrea Navid-Neel you'll enjoy it too--I think the author read about the real-life explorer and decided to fictionalize her life! There are certain broad similarities that make me think this. An enjoyable read, nice to visit an old friend from the past.

[Brenda Clough · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books that I wish I could have written. It is perfect, every way you look at it: a growing up story, an exploration tale, a foreign-lands epic, a love story, a spiritual quest. Wonderful!

[Dave Hay · Rating 3 out of 5]

simple, but enjoyable

[Clivemichael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great story

[Kasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book that I wasn't expecting to enjoy as much. I liked the spiritual aspect however the jump at the ending left many questions unanswered.

[Katharine Holden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent read.

[Nedge · Rating 4 out of 5]

A childhood favourite