The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 30 June 2007
by Lionel Davidson
Political chaos is often a good screen, a good backdrop, to a good adventure story. Enough of the facts are confused that almost anything can seem plausible. Wartime is good for this. Revolution. Political collapse. This book, a tumbling adventure published in 1962, is set during the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950 (a "peaceful liberation" that was neither). Added to the chaos in the region was the mysterious Tibetan culture at a time when its self-enforced obscurity was thrust upon the world stage where it was abandoned by the international community. There weren't more than a handful of Europeans in Tibet at the time of the invasion (while China, of course, claimed that these foreigners were manipulating Tibet and spying on the young Chinese government). Lionel Davidson crafted a bizarre but fast-moving and occasionally plausible story of one man's adventure in these chaotic times. Davidson, portraying himself as a publisher's assistant, encounters the story of Charles Houston, who escaped from Tibet in 1951, losing his left arm but gaining a fortune along the way. Intrigued by the story, he publishes what he can of the story while pursuing its author to get permission. Houston went off to India and then into Tibet in search of his missing half-brother who was, the story goes, part of a documentary film team that got lost in the mountains. Houston, improbably, bicycles through Sikkim and walks across the mountains, following trade routes to the Yamdring monastery. There, he encounters the bizarre practices of the local priestesses of the monastery. Davidson has done his homework on Tibet, weaving into his story some accurate details about the political structure and even the creation myth of the Tibetans. He dances around Tibetan Buddhism, though, and portrays a somewhat corrupt animist religion of a monastery populated by women, led by a concupiscent abess, and engaging in all kinds of decidedly unspiritual activities. Houston gets caught up in all this, searching for his brother who has been held prisoner for witnessing the holy of holies, but becoming a pawn in the local intrigues both political and religious (which are always intertwined in Tibet). When the Chinese do invade, Davidson gets some more of the history correct in showing the Tibetan ambivalence to the invaders, some nobles reaching deals with the communists while others become refugees. Houston makes a dramatic escape with a treasure and with the improbable love of his life, barely making it out of Tibet with his life after a months-long journey in the mountains. He is, however, occasionally quite casual about the tragedies he encounters along the way, and his primary failure might be expected to engender much more grief than he experiences. In the end, Davidson as publisher has no idea what to make of the story. He can corroborate some details, and the Chinese are interested in retrieving the lost treasure they consider theirs by right, but he can't be sure if the tale is just an exotic embroidery. Despite its many excesses, the story is quite taut and the writing is occasionally compelling. It is a well-constructed adventure tale as long as the reader doesn't expect the author to hew too closely to history.