Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this book.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
Long ago, the country of Tibet, high in the mountains of Asia, was closed to outsiders, and its capital city, Lhasa, was forbidden, which means nobody was allowed in. A brave English traveller named Landor decided to go anyway. He crossed snowy mountain passes with two helpers. Soldiers chased him, caught him, locked him up and hurt him, but he escaped. This book is his story of the journey: the hunger, the cold, the danger and never, ever giving up.
A. Henry Savage Landor, an English artist and traveller, sets out to reach Lhasa, the forbidden capital of Tibet, which no foreigner was allowed to enter. With two servants he crosses the high Himalayan passes, disguising his purpose as trade and exploration. Tibetan soldiers and officials hunt him, capture him, imprison and torture him, and he escapes to cross more mountains before reaching safety.
The book is built as one long pursuit narrative across both original volumes, here in a single record. Marches, rivers, passes and villages follow in diary order, with Landor's sketches and observations of the country filling the spaces between alarms.
It works because the momentum never lets up and the narrator never gives up. Whatever readers make of its period attitudes, as a story of endurance it grips: hunger, cold and pursuit answered by sheer stubbornness. The book was a sensation in 1898 and fixed Tibet in readers' minds as the ultimate forbidden place. The escapes are as memorable as the captures.
Tibet in the 1890s was closed to foreigners, its capital Lhasa forbidden, and A. Henry Savage Landor, an English artist and traveller, determined to get there anyway. Travelling with two servants and disguising his purpose as trade and exploration, he crossed the Himalayan passes, was hunted by Tibetan soldiers and officials, captured, imprisoned and tortured, and finally escaped to tell the tale. Published in 1898, his account was an immediate sensation and remains hard to put down.
Tibet in the 1890s was closed to foreigners, its capital Lhasa forbidden, and A. Henry Savage Landor, an English artist and traveller, determined to get there anyway. Travelling with two servants and disguising his purpose as trade and exploration, he crossed the Himalayan passes, was hunted by Tibetan soldiers and officials, captured, imprisoned and tortured, and finally escaped to tell the tale. As a narrative of endurance it is hard to put down: mountains, hunger, pursuit and sheer stubbornness, page after page, told vividly and often humorously.
His account, published in 1898, was an immediate sensation, and the book helped fix Tibet in the Western imagination as the ultimate forbidden place. This edition holds both original volumes in one record. Starvard carries it as a classic of exploration writing, read today with its period's colonial attitudes in view, and it sits well beside the shelf's other true stories of travel and survival. Anyone who loves a journey attempted against every warning will race through it. It is long, breathless and completely absorbing from the first pass to the last.
Edition: Heinemann's one-volume edition of 1899, holding the whole of the two-volume first edition of 1898; the publisher's catalog at the back is not shelved. Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 22210.
The first chapter
IN THE FORBIDDEN LAND
Title: In the forbidden land
an account of a journey into Tibet, capture by the Tibetan lamas and soldiers, imprisonment, torture and ultimate release
Author: Arnold Henry Savage Landor
Release date: August 1, 2007 [eBook #22210]
Most recently updated: January 2, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22210
Credits: Produced by Michael Ciesielski and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
IN THE FORBIDDEN LAND
Spine
IN THE FORBIDDEN LAND
Times: "The ordinary reader will be struck with the portraits, which show that in a very few weeks he must have endured a lifetime of concentrated misery. Other travellers, no doubt, have gone further, but none who have escaped with their lives have fared worse.... Mr. Landor tells a plain and manly tale, without affectation or bravado. It is a book, certainly, that will be read with interest and excitement."
Athenæum: "The account he has written of his travels and adventures is vivid and often fascinating. His frequent notices of curious customs are full of interest, and numerous illustrations from photographs or sketches taken on the spot render this one of the most attractive records of travel published recently."
Guardian: "Life, according to Mr. Landor, has 'barely a dull moment,' and the gloomiest of us will admit that this is at least true of that part of life which may be devoted to the reading of his latest book."
World: "He has contrived, even in circumstances of cruel disadvantage, to present a wonderfully minute and impressive series of pictures of the life, manners, and customs of the Tibetans. No less powerful and vivid are his descriptions of the scenery and natural phenomena of the Forbidden Land, which are reinforced by an ample series of illustrations that attain a high standard of artistic excellence. Mr. Landor's bitter experiences have had at least the advantage of providing him with material for the most absorbing travel book produced within recent times."
Daily Telegraph: "Mr. Landor's story is one of the most extraordinary tales of modern times, yet even the most sceptical reader will admire the vigour with which it is told, and the endurance with which the explorer and his faithful servants bore up against their savage captors."
Standard: "The book fascinates ... The verbal pictures it gives are extremely vivid, and the effect of them is greatly heightened by the numerous drawings and photographs by the author. Mr. Landor is an artist as well as traveller and writer, and he knows how to use his pencil and brush to emphasise his letter-press. Whatever may be said of the wisdom of his enterprises, his book is certainly a remarkable contribution to the literature of modern travel."
Daily News: "The great library of travel in the East has not received for many a year a more important addition than this bright, picturesque, and instructive volume."
Daily Chronicle: "Mr. Landor is an artist as well as a writer, and this handsome volume is most lavishly illustrated with sketches and photographs. Apart from its intense interest as a story of stirring adventure, the book is a valuable storehouse of information on Southern Tibet and its people, and on the little known Indian district of Northern Kumaon. This is surely a record of devotion to geographical science such as no previous explorer has been able to show."
A. Henry Savage Landor and his Two Faithful Servants
A. Henry Savage Landor and his Two Faithful Servants
Source: Project Gutenberg. Published 1898; this one-volume edition 1899. Author died 1924. Public domain. Share this book: WhatsApp
Starvard