Books by Heinrich Harrer 
Seven Years in Tibet
Lost Lhasa: Heinrich Harrer's Tibet
Return to Tibet, Tibet After The Chinese Occupation

Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer Paperback (1997)

Originally published in 1953, this adventure classic recounts Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer's 1943 escape from a British internment camp in India, his daring trek across the Himalayas, and his happy sojourn in Tibet, then, as now, a remote land little visited by foreigners. Warmly welcomed, he eventually became tutor to the Dalai Lama, teenaged god-king of the theocratic nation. The author's vivid descriptions of Tibetan rites and customs capture its unique traditions before the Chinese invasion in 1950, which prompted Harrer's departure. A 1996 epilogue details the genocidal havoc wrought over the past half-century.

Lost Lhasa : Heinrich Harrer's Tibet
by Heinrich Harrer, Galen Rowell
Paperback  (1997)

In the 1940s, Austrian mountain climber Heinrich Harrer escaped from a British internment camp in India and walked across the Himalayas. He limped into Lhasa two years later, and spent five years there as an honorary Tibetan. He kept diaries, bartered for an old Leica camera, and took thousands of pictures. Then in 1950 the Chinese invaded Tibet and Harrer fled. Seven Years in Tibet tells that story, but Harrer wanted to do more to raise international awareness. The result is Lost Lhasa, a collection of hundreds of previously unpublished intimate photographs of the Lhasa that used to be. With an explanatory text written in the same unpretentious prose that made Seven Years so popular, this paean to the Lhasa Harrer knew is beautiful and irreplaceable.

Return to Tibet: Tibet After the Chinese Occupation by Heinrich Harrer, Ewald Osers Paperback (1998)

A fusty, indignant report -- dated 1983 -- from Tibet by Harrer, the now-celebrated adventurer who briefly returned to his ``second home'' 30 years after fleeing China's invasion. In 1982 he was able to revisit Tibet during the ``Chinese-staged thaw,'' and he was by turns heartbroken and inspired by what he observed: Valuable cultural treasures had been destroyed by the invaders, and stories of concentration camps, forced labor, and political murders sent him reeling. Yet the country's religion was still strong, and there continued both armed resistance to the Chinese and an unquashable national will. His two sojourns in the country make for some intriguing before-and-after comparisons, and his comments on particulars of Tibetan Buddhism are revealing. But the tone of the book is dryly nostalgic, when not bitter, and Harrer's opinions sometimes seem jarringly contradictory. He rails against what the Chinese have done to the countryrazing monasteries, imprisoning and killing nationalsand then inexplicably suggests that China and Tibet might be well served by a partnership, with Tibet happily becoming ``part of that enormous yellow state.'' Moreover, every so often he lets the feudalist in him shine through unforgivably in making unfortunate remarks on his longing for a land ``where superstition would be the poetry of life.'' The insights are worth the cover price anyhow, despite the authors occasional reactionary comments and his priggishness. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Get an incredible subscription deal right now on Antique Trader Weekly & other art & antiques at MAGAZINES.com! USA subscribers only.