About the Author

PETER HOPKIRK is the author of Like Hidden Fire- The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire, Trespassers on the Roof of the World- The Race for Lhasa, and two other books. A staff writer for the Times of London for nineteen years, five as its chief reporter, he is a Middle and Far East specialist.

Reviews

"Hopkirk’s wonderfully vivid book describes the...always thrilling efforts of explorers, spies...to plumb Tibet’s secrets."—Philadelphia Inquirer



"Hopkirk handles the storytelling with infectious enthusiasm...[with] great and obvious love for the subject, and is one of those British writers who cannot write an awkward of boring sentence."—Bruse Colman, The San Francisco Chronicle



"A lament for a country that, wanting only to be left alone, was hauled unceremoniously into the twentieth century, and is now an unwilling satellite of Communist China."—Richard E. Nicholls, The Philadelphia Inquirer