Seven Years in Tibet - Softcover

Heinrich Harrer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0874778883 ISBN 13: 9780874778885

Publisher: Jeremy P Tarcher, 1997

Synopsis

Originally published in 1953, this adventure classic recounts Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer's 1943 escape from a British internment camp in India, his daring trek across the Himalayas, and his happy sojourn in Tibet, then, as now, a remote land little visited by foreigners. Warmly welcomed, he eventually became tutor to the Dalai Lama, teenaged god-king of the theocratic nation. The author's vivid descriptions of Tibetan rites and customs capture its unique traditions before the Chinese invasion in 1950, which prompted Harrer's departure. A 1996 epilogue details the genocidal havoc wrought over the past half-century.

About this title

Review

‘Like the voyage of the Kon-Tiki, it deserves to take its place among the few great travel stories of our own times’
The Times

‘Few adventureres in this century have had the combined luck and hardihood to return with such news as this. Fewer still have rendered it so powerfully unadorned.’
Times Literary Supplement

‘Some books, like some mountains, are lonely and unrivalled peaks, and this is one of these.’ Economist

From the Back Cover

In the summer of 1939, climber and Olympic ski champion Heinrich Harrer was in India when war was declared. He found himself a prisoner of the British and was interned at the POW camp at Dehra- Dun.

‘Up here,’ says Harrer, ‘we had the Himalayas right in front of us. How attractive to a mountaineer was the thought of winning through to Tibet over the passes... Even if my plan failed it would be worth having a spell of high freedom in the high mountains.’ So began an adventure of epic proportions.

With few possessions and little money, Harrer escaped in 1944 and succeeded in reaching Tibet only to discover that the Tibetans did not welcome strangers. Eventually, after great hardship and some remarkable experiences, battling against both the ferocity of the elements and the indifference of officials to his plight, he succeeded in reaching the forbidden city of Lhasa where he became a tutor and friend of the present Dalai Lama, then a young boy, only leaving the country when the Red Chinese invasion forced the Dalai Lama to flee.

“Like the voyage of the Kon Tiki, it deserves to take its place among the few great travel stories of our own times.”
THE TIMES

“Few adventurers in this century have had the combined luck and hardihood to return with such news as this. Fewer still have rendered it so powerfully unadorned.”
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

About this edition

• Publisher: Jeremy P Tarcher
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0874778883
• ISBN 13: 9780874778885
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352