Synopses & Reviews
This is the account of a journey to the holiest mountain on earth, the solitary peak of Kailas in Tibet, sacred to one-fifth of humankind. To both Buddhists and Hindus it is the mystic heart of the world and an ancient site of pilgrimage. It has never been climbed. Even today, under Chinese domination, the people of four religions circle the mountain in devotion to different gods.
Colin Thubron reached it by foot along the Karnali River, the highest source of the Ganges. His journey is an entry into the culture of today's Tibet, and a pilgrimage in the wake his mother's death and the loss of his family. He undertakes it in order to mark the event, to leave a sign of their passage. He also explores his own need for solitude, which has shaped his career as a writer—one who travels to places beyond his own history and culture, writing about them and about the journey. To a Mountain in Tibet is at once a powerful travelogue, a fascinated encounter with alien faith, and an intimate personal voyage.
It is a haunting and beautiful book, a rare mix of discovery and loss. In its evocation of landscape and variety of exotic peoples, of mythic and spiritual traditions foreign to our own, it is a spectacular achievement from our greatest living travel writer, an artist of formidable literary gifts, uncanny intuition, and wondrous insight.
Review
"Engrossing and affecting...poignant evocations of his mother and sister, interwoven with his profound respect for the Tibetan culture and landscape, make Thubron's memoir and utterly moving [listen]." ---Publishers Weekly Starred Review
Review
"In To a Mountain in Tibet...what seems almost as striking is Thubron's understanding of the power of silence." ---The New York Times
Synopsis
Colin Thubron, one of our greatest living travel writers, offers a haunting and beautiful account of his journey to the holiest mountain on earth, the solitary peak of Kailas in Tibet, sacred to one-fifth of humankind.
About the Author
Colin Thubron is an award-winning travel writer and novelist. He is the author of Mirror to Damascus, The Hills of Adonis, Jerusalem, Among the Russians, Shadow of the Silk Road, and Behind the Wall, which won both the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. In addition to travelogues, Colin is also the author of several novels, including Emperor, Turning Back the Sun, To the Last City, and A Cruel Madness, which earned him the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 1969, Colin lives in London. Steven Crossley is one of a select group of narrators who have recorded over two hundred audiobooks. He has won multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, including for The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie and Sharpe's Fury by Bernard Cornwell. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and has established an acting career on both sides of the Atlantic in theater, television, film, and radio drama, performing with distinguished theater companies in New York and London. He is a member of the internationally acclaimed company Complicite. His audiobook performances cover an eclectic range of subjects in both fiction and nonfiction, from thrillers, mysteries, classics, and histories to children's fantasy and biographies.These include works by such writers as Pat Barker, Joseph Conrad, Oscar Wilde, Sebastian Faulkes, Zadie Smith, Ian McKewan, and Tana French.