Noel Barber FROM THE LAND OF LOST CONTENT First Edition
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Noel Barber FROM THE LAND OF LOST CONTENT First Edition
First edition, first print hardback of FROM THE LAND OF LOST CONTENT : The Dalai Lama's Fight for Tibet, by Noel Barber and published by Collins, London in 1969.The book is in very good condition (clean red textured paper boards and gold lettering with black background on spine which has minor bumping to the corners) with slight wear to the illustrated paper dust jacket, which is not price clipped (slight rubbing and chipping to corners, two half-inch closed tears, one to the top corner at the front and the other to the top spine corner at the back, slight tanning with light moisture stain on the spine which is also inside the jacket). Internally, the pages are clean and tight. There is a small previous owner's inscription at the top corner of the front endpaper.
British novelist and journalist Noel Barber's many novels, considered exotic, are about his experiences as leading foreign correspondent for the Daily Mail. Most notably he reported from Morocco, where he was stabbed five times, In October 1956, Barber survived a gunshot wound to the head by a Soviet sentry in Hungary during the Hungarian revolution. A car crash ended his career as journalist, that is when he started writing novels. He became a best selling novelist in his seventies with his first novel: Tanamera, a novel of Singapore. The Daughters of the Prince is the last novel of Noel Barber who died in 1988. He was the author of many noted works of non-fiction including Fall of Shanghai: Communist Takeover in 1949 (1979) and The War of the Running Dogs: How Malaya Defeated the Communist Guerrillas, 1948-60 (1971). He also wrote a marvellously entertaining autobiography, The Natives Were Friendly So We Stayed the Night. Tanamera was filmed as a television serial in 1989 and The Other Side of Paradise was filmed for TV in 1992.
"From the Land of Lost Content may well be the last book to describe the Tibet of Old - that remote and romantic land before ten years of Chinese oppression drove the inhabitants to revolt and the Dalai Lama to exile.
In 1959, on Tibet's south-eastern border, Chime, youthful leader of the Khambas - Tibet's only warrior tribe, set out on an epic march to Lhasa at the head of his followers to urge the equally youthful Dalai Lama to lead an effective revolt against the Chinese.
The Dalai Lama was caught in an agonizing dilemma; all he believed in and stood for forbade the spilling of blood, even the blood of enemies; yet to refuse an official Chinese invitation to Peking would invite the worst reprisals, while to accept would leave his people leaderless - for it was unlikely that he would be allowed to return. Realizing the hopelessness of his situation and sensing the rebellious mood of his people, he made a dramatic escape from the Royal Palace.
There follows a vivid account of armed resistance in Lhasa. Not all Tibetans were heroes, some even turned traitor. But where heroism was needed it was found, as in the case of an elderly hunchback who, single-handed, kept three mortars firing at a large force of Chinese - and lived to get away; or the party who fought off the Dalai Lama at the river crossing, beyond which lay India and safety.
Noel Barber interviewed scores of survivors all over the world who were lucky enough to escape, among whom were the Dalai Lama himself, together with members of his government and retinue. It is on their eye-witness accounts that Noel Barber's dramatic reconstruction is based."
224 pages. Maps on endpapers.
SBN: 00 211269 8
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Noel Barber FROM THE LAND OF LOST CONTENT First Edition