Thu 28 Apr 2022
A 1001 Midnights Review: LIONEL DAVIDSON – The Rose of Tibet.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[7] Comments
by Bill Pronzini
LIONEL DAVIDSON – The Rose of Tibet. Gollancz, UK, hardcover, 1962. Harper & Row, hardcover, 1962. Reprinted many times (and still in print).
Like Mark McShane, Lionel Davidson is one of those talented writers who possess a knack for seldom if ever repeating themselves from book to book. His first novel, The Night of Wenceslas (1960), is a tale of espionage set in Czechoslovakia (which won a CWA Golden Dagger, the first of three garnered by Davidson); The Menorah Men (1966) is a thriller with political overtones that takes place in Jerusalem; Murder Games (1978) is a whodunit laid in London’s bohemian art world; and The Rose of Tibet is a magnificent “quest” novel of suspense and high adventure reminiscent of the work of H. Rider Haggard.
Set in 1950-51, The Rose of Tibet covers the perilous seventeen-month odyssey of Charles Houston. It begins in England, where Houston learns that his brother and other members of a group sent to northern India to film mountain climbing have mysteriously disappeared. At the request of the film company, he travels to India to search for information about his brother, alive or dead.
In Calcutta, where his quest is apparently at an end, he hears talk of a Tibetan monastery that might hold the key — but the Chinese Communists have only recently seized control of Tibet, and no foreigners are being allowed into the country. Houston is not to be thwarted; he travels to Kalimpong and soon hires a Sherpa guide named Ringling, who leads him through Sikkim and Nepal, across the mighty Himalayas, and into the fabled Tibetan capital of Lhasa.
Danger after danger plagues them en route and after they arrive at the temple of the Monkey God. But Houston survives “to enjoy the love of a goddess and to live through adventures so bizarre that almost no other man-perhaps no other man at all-has equaled them.”
This is superb entertainment, utterly mesmerizing from first page to last. It is difficult to imagine any novelist more vividly evoking the awesome splendor of the Himalayas or the exotic people and landscapes of Tibet. High adventure as only the British can write it, and not to be missed.
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
April 28th, 2022 at 8:15 pm
Graham Greene, Daphne duMaurier, and Ian Fleming all praised ROSE OF TIBET, and I can only agree. It is both a great adventure tale in the classic sense, but has a modern sensibility, and works as a more worldly variation on LOST HORIZON but in real world Cold War politics.
The story wouldn’t be too far off what is going on today in that region in many cases.
There are scenes in this book you will likely never forget, and that is no exaggeration.
It also has one of the better endings of any book in the modern (Post War) British thriller genre.
I can’t be even handed about it ROSE OF TIBET is one of my favorite books of all time
April 28th, 2022 at 10:12 pm
After reading your comment just now, it reminded me that you’d reviewed the book over 12 years ago on this blog, and a rave review at that:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=1410
Davidson’s son Phil stopped by with a comment, too.
April 28th, 2022 at 10:10 pm
I think Davidson’s last book, Kolmysky Heights, is the finest pure thriller I’ve ever read.
April 28th, 2022 at 10:14 pm
No matter what I’ve promised myself I have to do, I still haven’t read anything by Davidson yet. This time I mean it.
April 28th, 2022 at 10:18 pm
A chronological list of Lionel Davidson’s adventure thrillers:
Night of Wenceslas (n.) Gollancz 1960 [Prague]
The Rose of Tibet (n.) Gollancz 1962 [Tibet]
A Long Way to Shiloh (n.) Gollancz 1966 [Israel]
The Menorah Men (n.) Harper 1966; See: A Long Way to Shiloh (Gollancz 1966).
Making Good Again (n.) Cape 1968 [Germany]
The Sun Chemist (n.) Cape 1976 [Israel]
The Chelsea Murders (n.) Cape 1978 [London]
Murder Games (n.) Coward 1978; See: The Chelsea Murders (Cape 1978).
Kolymsky Heights (n.) Heinemann 1994 [Russia]
April 29th, 2022 at 9:57 am
I’m sure the failing is mine but I’ve tried to read this multiple times and never gotten more than a little ways in.
I still have my copy. This review and the comments have inspired me yet again.
April 29th, 2022 at 1:23 pm
Rick
Maybe the fourth time is the charm.
Or maybe not. Sometimes a book just doesn’t work, for whatever reason.