Peaks on the Horizon: Two Journeys in Tibet

by Charlie Carroll

Overview

Charlie Carroll’s obsession began with his chance discovery of Seven Years in Tibet in the “Adult Reading” section of his grade school library. The battered hardcover with faded gold lettering sparked a twenty-year obsession with Tibet, and after combing through every book, article, and documentary on the mysterious and controversial nation, Charlie finally decided it was time to stop reading other people’s records and thoughts. A high school English teacher by then, he took a sabbatical and set out to experience the shrouded land for himself. Contending with Chinese bureaucracy, unforgiving terrain, and sickness-inducing altitude, Charlie sought entrance to twenty-first-century Tibet in all its heart-stopping beauty.

The same year Charlie was browsing library shelves, Tibetan-born Lobsang was crossing the Himalayas on foot, enduring to flee the volatile region with his family at the young age of five. An exile in Nepal with an ear for languages, then a university student in India, he followed the love of his life back to their home country, only to be separated by China’s harsh political backlash. In a teahouse at the border between China and Tibet, Lobsang met Charlie and recounted his extraordinary life story, exemplifying the hardship, resilience, and hope of modern Tibetan life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619024847
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	02/10/2015
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	1,161,865
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.19(h) x 1.11(d)

About the Author

Charlie Carroll is the author of On the Edge (Monday Books, 2010), serialized in the Daily Mail and The Week and described by The Telegraph as “remarkable.” Charlie has spoken on BBC Radio 5Live and local BBC radio stations, and written for The Guardian and The Big Issue.

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/08/2014
In this passionate account, part memoir and part travelogue, journalist Carroll (On the Edge) documents fulfilling a lifelong dream as he journeys to Tibet to experience its mysteries and wonders. He waxes poetic about its beauty and philosophical about its treatment and exploitation by the Chinese, delving into Tibet’s rich history and culture in order to shine a light on just how the country has suffered under decades of occupation and subjugation. His story is interwoven with that of Lobsang, a Tibetan national who fled with his family to Nepal when he was five years old. As Lobsang grows up, readers see the heartbreak and longing of Tibetan refugees and exiles, following Lobsang’s quest to understand his homeland, which eventually leads him to attempt returning the same way he left: illegally. Lobsang’s story dovetails with Carroll’s as they find a mutual love of their surroundings, and a shared outrage at what Tibet has become under Chinese influence. Carroll’s passion for the topic bleeds on to the pages, making this both a love letter to Tibet and a call to arms for Tibetan freedom. By adding Lobsang’s tale, Carroll further humanizes the effort. While on his journey, drinking yak-butter tea and conversing with a local, Carroll is reminded of something the Dalai Lama once said: “Go to Tibet and then tell the world about it.” In this engrossing and even enlightening book, Carroll meets that mandate. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Thoroughly absorbing . . . Carroll is a winningly immediate writer, with a deeply personal feel for the memorable, the authentic. His book is studded with great scenes and great moments . . . A great deal of Peaks on the Horizon reads like diving into a bonfire; this is travel-writing of the highest order, simultaneously ambassadorial and conspiratorial. All travelers—armchair or otherwise—are urged not to miss it." —Open Letters Monthly

"A pithily descriptive writer . . . Lobsang's story and Carroll's mixture of history and personal observation will strongly appeal to readers interested in Tibet." —Booklist

"The narrative reads like fiction and Carroll builds a lot of suspense into it. Recommended for all travel collections." —Library Journal starred review

"He richly describes the landscape of the country and its people . . . A gripping, enlightening journey." —Kirkus

"Carroll's passion for the topic bleeds on to the pages, making this both a love letter to Tibet and a call to arms for Tibetan freedom. By adding Lobsang's tale, Carroll further humanizes the effort . . . In this engrossing and even enlightening book, Carroll meets that mandate." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

From the Publisher

★ 02/15/2015
Carroll, an English secondary school teacher, author (On the Edge), and Tibetophile, visited Tibet on an escorted tour in 2009. This book, however, is not simply a travel memoir but also a biography of Lobsang, a Tibetan refugee who was forced to flee Lhasa as a child and returns to Tibet illegally as a young man. This is the story of two quests, with the Tibetan refugee's extraordinary account providing the fodder for the second journey. Along the way we learn about Tibetan history and culture. The country was once independent before its takeover by China in 1950. Carroll provides details about the atrocities inflicted on the Tibetans during this time and during the Cultural Revolution. The title provides glimpses of 21st-century Sinicized Tibet, the ubiquitous security forces, and the protests and underground movements organized by Tibetan youth. The narrative reads like fiction and Carroll builds a lot of suspense into it. VERDICT Recommended for all travel collections.—Ravi Shenoy, Naperville, IL

Library Journal

2014-11-18
An English traveler examines the occupation of Tibet firsthand while crossing paths with a Tibetan refugee whose life exemplifies that conflict.In his United States debut, British journalist Carroll (No Fixed Abode: A Journey Through Homelessness from Cornwall to London, 2013, etc.) chronicles his visit to the "Roof of the World," examining the history and conquest of a people and the story of one young Tibetan exile's perilous attempts to cross the border. Seeking to understand why the ruling Han Chinese invaded Tibet in 1950 and why they remain, Carroll jumped at the opportunity to travel to the "country of stone and ice," which is (unofficially) closed to outsiders since Chinese officials fear that they might observe—and report on—daily life in Tibet. He richly describes the landscape of the country and its people—e.g., painterly images of a stretch of terrain outside his car window as "a bay of wet and seeping mud which formed strange patterns and shapes as interpretive as clouds"; a rugged, "serrated horizon"; an area "scored" by "red crenulated mountains." In addition to recounting his travels, Carroll tells the story of Lobsang, a Tibetan expat crossing the Himalayas on foot. The author explores China's tyranny and human rights abuses against dissenters in such alarming detail that readers will gasp with worry and dismay when the young man even considers an illegal border crossing. (The author also drolly recounts weighing the limited programming options on China's main TV network, which, from what he could tell, aired mostly "military dramas and terrifying operas.") Though Lobsang's meeting with the author is inevitable, it is still suspenseful in the atmosphere of heightened drama that Carroll builds. The author dutifully fulfills Tibetans' oft-repeated exhortation to visitors: "Go to Tibet, and then tell the world what you saw." A gripping, enlightening journey.

Kirkus Reviews