The Rose of Tibet in Espionage Aficionados

Aug 27, 2018 Philip rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 4-stars, 1960s, unconventional-style, fiction-standalone, tibet-fiction, kiss-kiss-bang-bang

Had never heard of either this book or author, so big thanks to my GR friend (and fellow Tibetophile) Sophie Schiller!

Surprisingly, this book is in many ways similar to Jack Higgins' Year of the Tiger* - a lone Westerner and his guide head into Tibet to rescue other imprisoned Westerners, and then race back to India across frozen mountains just steps ahead of the invading Chinese. The main difference is that Tiger generally, um, sucked; while this story is outright fantastic - proving yet again Had never heard of either this book or author, so big thanks to my GR friend (and fellow Tibetophile) Sophie Schiller!

Surprisingly, this book is in many ways similar to Jack Higgins' Year of the Tiger* - a lone Westerner and his guide head into Tibet to rescue other imprisoned Westerners, and then race back to India across frozen mountains just steps ahead of the invading Chinese. The main difference is that Tiger generally, um, sucked; while this story is outright fantastic - proving yet again that plot aside, it is still true that voice and style and overall skill carries the day. So...that should be a big win for literary values, right? Except that it's Higgins that is the household name, while almost no one has ever heard of Davidson....and so I'm frankly unsure of the lesson here.

But I digress. The Rose of Tibet is a delightfully-told tale that swings between slight whimsy (as basically any story set in Tibet must) and hard-core horror (as also must basically any story that includes a winter crossing of the Himalaya and/or a race against 1950's Communist Chinese forces). It's also told through a unique device - beginning, middle and end chapters show that this is a found memoir that a fictionalized (?) "Lionel Davidson" is working to authenticate and publish - which landed the book on my "unconventional style" list and almost earned it 5 stars, but ultimately fell half a point short based on my own opinion that the ending (in London's publishing houses, not the mountains) could have been a little more definitive.

This is still not the grand Tom Clancy-like story I've been looking for as far as a fictionalized account of Western involvement in the whole China/Tibet war of the late 50s-ealy 70s - sword-wielding Khampa cavalry charging Chinese armored divisions; CIA airdrops of US-trained guerillas and the ultimate betrayal of the Tibetan cause by President Nixon as part of his outreach to Beijing. But until I find that book - and I'll keep looking - this is the next best thing: a rollicking (I don't think I've ever used that word before) Indiana Jones-type debacle featuring a fortune in emeralds, a beautiful and exotic princess, and a horde of evil Nazis...er, Commies.

* Yeah, I know GR says Year of the Tiger was written by "Martin Fallon," but that was just one of the multiple pseudonyms Higgins wrote under. In fact, he isn't even really Jack Higgins - that too is a "nom de plume" (thank you, high school French); his real name is Henry Patterson. ...more

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Oct 23, 2014 Graeme Shimmin rated it really liked it

Shelves: thriller

This is a rather 'old fashioned' adventure story of as sort you don't really see a lot. The hero, Houston, goes to Tibet looking for his missing brother, and gets involved with a Tibetan Bhuddist Abbess in her 18th incarnation, a treasure hunt, and the invading Chinese. Much of the story is a survival adventure as Houston struggles through the Himalayas.

The novel feels like a modern updating of stories like King Solomon's Mines and She, where Europeans travel to exotic foreign places and have ad ...more

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