Supremely readable analysis of Tibet’s history and place in the modern world, covering its relationships with China and the rest of the world (past and present – including the British invasion under Younghusband), and Patrick French‘s own exploration of the country and encounters with the people and the politics of Tibet in 1999.
On his return, he resigned his position as director of the Free Tibet Campaign.
Publisher’s webpage: Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land – Patrick French
Oh, how I loved this novel.
An Australian (Tasmanian?)’s take on the Burma Railway and the brutal treatment of Australian PoWs in World War II.
But more than that: A love story; love stories.
Beautiful.
Author’s webpage: The Narrow Road to the Deep North – Richard Flanagan
This name lodged in my brain from a 99 percent invisible (I think….) podcast advert, for the movie it’s been made into.
But don’t let that, or the cover and blurbs, put you off! The latter not do justice to the book’s research and the twin track quests it recounts – Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett‘s for the ancient civilisation(s) of the Amazon, the author’s for the expedition Fawcett led in 1925, and which never returned.
Fawcett’s previous explorations, surveying borders, rivers and routes through the Amazon in the 1910s and 1920s took place at the same time as more famous expeditions to the Poles and the Mallory-era attempts on Everest. Fawcett’s was a life similarly interrupted and irrevocably impacted by World War I, where he served as an officer on the Western Front.
A couple of interesting nuggets that I learned from the book were that:
One minor niggle, but one that kept resurfacing, were the American English references that always jar for the British English ear: ‘the London Times’, the ‘Mayfair district’, ‘jelly’ for jam, ‘X wrote Y’. Still, worth working though!
An array of travelling tales from authors better known for their fiction. Each short and sweet, and for the most part excellent reads, often looking back at an incident or experience early in the author’s life.
Publishers page: Better Than Fiction: True Travel from Great Fiction Writers – Don George (ed)
Brunetti is asked to investigate the attack on the teenage grand daughter ofContessa Lando-Continui, a friend of his parents-in-law, which left Manuela with a mental age of 6-7 …. 15 years ago.
With the by now familiar an not strictly by the book assistance from Signora Elettra, and with Commissario Claudia Griffoni as his co-investigator rather than trusty Vianello, we see Brunetti comfortable working in a predominantly female context, and see Venice through female eyes.
Publisher’s page: The Waters of Eternal Youth – Donna Leon