In 1891, the British public was horrified to learn that Sherlock Holmes had perished in a deadly struggle with archcriminal Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. Then, to its amazement, he reappeared two years later, informing a stunned Watson, "I traveled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself visiting Lhasa."
Nothing has been known of those missing years until Jamyang Norbu's discovery, in a rusting tin box in Darjeeling, of a carefully wrapped manuscript: an account by Huree Chunder Mookerjee-Kipling's Bengali spy and scholar- of his own travels with Sherlock Holmes. Now, for the first time, we follow Holmes north across the dusty plains of India to Simla, summer capital of the British Raj, and over the high passes to the vast emptiness of the Tibetan plateau.
In the medieval splendor that is Lhasa, intrigue and black treachery stalk the shadows, and Sherlock Holmes confronts his greatest challenge.
"Wonderful...beautifully imagined...An engrossing combination of East and West, old and young, conventional storytelling and loving Parody" -The Washington Post
The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes: The adventures of the great detective in India and Tibet, by Jamyang Norbu, softcover, Bloomsbury Publishing, Paperback, 1999/2003, pages 279, 1999, $13.95.
Jamyang Norbu is one of Tibet's foremost writers at work today. In 2000.he received the Crossword Award for English fiction, India equivalent of the Booker Prize, for The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes.
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