The Rose of Tibet - Tapa blanda

Thrilling ... a perilous journey across Tibet in search of a missing brother. (Jake Kerridge Telegraph)

This tale of a quest for treasure from India to Tibet should ... have been a Harrison Ford film. (Christopher Fowler Independent)

Like all accounts of wild and dangerous encounters with extreme cold, pain and fear, it intensifies the comfort and cosiness of an armchair in a warm, softly-lit room in a peaceful and ordered land ... An astonishing work of imagination. (Peter Hitchens)

Is Lionel Davidson today's Rider Haggard? His novel has all the excitement of She and King Solomon's Mines. (Daphne du Maurier)

A first-class piece of storytelling, well-plotted, convincing, suspenseful. (Sunday Telegraph)

[W]ritten with elegance, intelligence and wit ... The Rose of Tibet, if it is to be classified, is an adventure thriller, peppered with history, religion and politics. Its hero, Charles Houston, a failed artist bored with being an art teacher, sets out to find his brother Hugh, last heard of travelling with a film crew in Tibet. It is late 1949, shortly before communist China's invasion of the Buddhist state ... Most of the book's riveting atmospheric action is filled by Houston's slow and troubled journey over the mountains to Yamdring, a town teeming with priestesses and monasteries, at one of which his brother was rumoured to be. He's constantly beset by illness, a propensity to drink, injury, exhaustion, terrible weather, inadequate maps, an unreliable horse and the young Ringling, an inexperienced local guide and translator ... His flight back to civilisation is as fraught as was his journey to Yamdring - and just as gripping ... Faber's reissue of Lionel Davidson's novels, which started last year with Kolymsky Heights, is very welcome. (Marcel Berlins The Times)

[A]nother fine example of Lionel Davidson's narrative mastery and a must-read. (Daily Express)

[A]s compelling as it was 50 years ago ... The Rose of Tibet has lost none of its charm over the years and Davidson's depiction of Himalayas is one of the finest you'll ever encounter. (Upcoming4.me)

Superb ... an account of human endurance pushed to (even beyond) its limits, interspersed with a heart-rending love story and more than a dash of mystifying mysticism and some fascinating facts about Tibet and the Chinese invasion. (Shiny New Books)

Lionel Davidson was born in 1922 in Hull, Yorkshire. He left school early and worked as a reporter before serving in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. His first novel, The Night of Wenceslas, was published in 1960 to great critical acclaim and drew comparisons to Graham Greene and John le Carre. It was followed by The Rose of Tibet (1962), A Long Way to Shiloh (1966), The Chelsea Murders (1978) and Kolymsky Heights (1994). He was thrice the recipient of the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award and, in 2001, was awarded the CWA's Cartier Diamond Dagger lifetime achievement award. He died in 2009.