Peaks on the Horizon

Starred review from December 8, 2014
In this passionate account, part memoir and part travelogue, journalist Carroll (On the Edge) documents fulfilling a lifelong dream as he journeys to Tibet to experience its mysteries and wonders. He waxes poetic about its beauty and philosophical about its treatment and exploitation by the Chinese, delving into Tibet’s rich history and culture in order to shine a light on just how the country has suffered under decades of occupation and subjugation. His story is interwoven with that of Lobsang, a Tibetan national who fled with his family to Nepal when he was five years old. As Lobsang grows up, readers see the heartbreak and longing of Tibetan refugees and exiles, following Lobsang’s quest to understand his homeland, which eventually leads him to attempt returning the same way he left: illegally. Lobsang’s story dovetails with Carroll’s as they find a mutual love of their surroundings, and a shared outrage at what Tibet has become under Chinese influence. Carroll’s passion for the topic bleeds on to the pages, making this both a love letter to Tibet and a call to arms for Tibetan freedom. By adding Lobsang’s tale, Carroll further humanizes the effort. While on his journey, drinking yak-butter tea and conversing with a local, Carroll is reminded of something the Dalai Lama once said: “Go to Tibet and then tell the world about it.” In this engrossing and even enlightening book, Carroll meets that mandate.

December 1, 2014
An English traveler examines the occupation of Tibet firsthand while crossing paths with a Tibetan refugee whose life exemplifies that conflict.In his United States debut, British journalist Carroll (No Fixed Abode: A Journey Through Homelessness from Cornwall to London, 2013, etc.) chronicles his visit to the "Roof of the World," examining the history and conquest of a people and the story of one young Tibetan exile's perilous attempts to cross the border. Seeking to understand why the ruling Han Chinese invaded Tibet in 1950 and why they remain, Carroll jumped at the opportunity to travel to the "country of stone and ice," which is (unofficially) closed to outsiders since Chinese officials fear that they might observe-and report on-daily life in Tibet. He richly describes the landscape of the country and its people-e.g., painterly images of a stretch of terrain outside his car window as "a bay of wet and seeping mud which formed strange patterns and shapes as interpretive as clouds"; a rugged, "serrated horizon"; an area "scored" by "red crenulated mountains." In addition to recounting his travels, Carroll tells the story of Lobsang, a Tibetan expat crossing the Himalayas on foot. The author explores China's tyranny and human rights abuses against dissenters in such alarming detail that readers will gasp with worry and dismay when the young man even considers an illegal border crossing. (The author also drolly recounts weighing the limited programming options on China's main TV network, which, from what he could tell, aired mostly "military dramas and terrifying operas.") Though Lobsang's meeting with the author is inevitable, it is still suspenseful in the atmosphere of heightened drama that Carroll builds. The author dutifully fulfills Tibetans' oft-repeated exhortation to visitors: "Go to Tibet, and then tell the world what you saw." A gripping, enlightening journey.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from February 15, 2015

Carroll, an English secondary school teacher, author (On the Edge), and Tibetophile, visited Tibet on an escorted tour in 2009. This book, however, is not simply a travel memoir but also a biography of Lobsang, a Tibetan refugee who was forced to flee Lhasa as a child and returns to Tibet illegally as a young man. This is the story of two quests, with the Tibetan refugee's extraordinary account providing the fodder for the second journey. Along the way we learn about Tibetan history and culture. The country was once independent before its takeover by China in 1950. Carroll provides details about the atrocities inflicted on the Tibetans during this time and during the Cultural Revolution. The title provides glimpses of 21st-century Sinicized Tibet, the ubiquitous security forces, and the protests and underground movements organized by Tibetan youth. The narrative reads like fiction and Carroll builds a lot of suspense into it. VERDICT Recommended for all travel collections.--Ravi Shenoy, Naperville, IL

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2015
British teacher Carroll ascribes his interest in Tibet to reading and rereading Seven Years in Tibet, by Heinrich Harrer (1952), which he cites occasionally in this account of his own journey to the country in 2009. A pithily descriptive writer, Carroll notes with economy his travel through Tibet, impressions of the landscapes, and reaction to such Tibetan landmarks as the Potala Palace in Lhasa. Tightly controlled by the Chinese government, Tibet's fate since being invaded in 1950 weaves through Carroll's narrative, the whole text running parallel to a second Tibetan journey that he relates, the life of a Tibetan man Carroll says he met at the Tibet-Nepal border. Conferring an alias on him as protection from Chinese retribution, Carroll presents the tale in Lobsang's voice, which recalls fleeing Lhasa in 1989, illegally returning to Lhasa to be with his girlfriend, whom the Chinese arrest, which compels Lobsang's second flight from his homeland. Cast as representative of the Tibetans' tribulations under Chinese domination, Lobsang's story and Carroll's mixture of history and personal observation will strongly appeal to readers interested in Tibet.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)