Book Summary and Reviews of Peaks on the Horizon by Charlie Carroll

Peaks on the Horizon by Charlie Carroll

Peaks on the Horizon

Two Journeys in Tibet

by Charlie Carroll

  • Critics' Consensus (2):
  • Published:
  • Feb 2015, 368 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Charlie Carroll's obsession began with his chance discovery of Seven Years in Tibet in the "Adult Reading" section of his grade school library. The battered hardcover with faded gold lettering sparked a twenty-year obsession with Tibet, and after combing through every book, article, and documentary on the mysterious and controversial nation, Charlie finally decided it was time to stop reading other people's records and thoughts. A high school English teacher by then, he took a sabbatical and set out to experience the shrouded land for himself. Contending with Chinese bureaucracy, unforgiving terrain, and sickness-inducing altitude, Charlie sought entrance to twenty-first-century Tibet in all its heart-stopping beauty.

The same year Charlie was browsing library shelves, Tibetan-born Lobsang was crossing the Himalayas on foot, enduring to flee the volatile region with his family at the young age of five. An exile in Nepal with an ear for languages, then a university student in India, he followed the love of his life back to their home country, only to be separated by China's harsh political backlash. In a teahouse at the border between China and Tibet, Lobsang met Charlie and recounted his extraordinary life story, exemplifying the hardship, resilience, and hope of modern Tibetan life.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Passionate...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." - Publishers Weekly

"He richly describes the landscape of the country and its people…suspenseful…A gripping, enlightening journey." - Kirkus

This information about Peaks on the Horizon was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Charlie Carroll

Charlie Carroll is the author of On the Edge (Monday Books, 2010), serialized in the Daily Mail and The Week and described by The Telegraph as "remarkable." Charlie has spoken on BBC Radio 5Live and local BBC radio stations, and written for The Guardian and The Big Issue.

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