Book Description
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.
Praise For This Book
"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
