Secret Tibet

by Fosco Maraini

Book Overview

In this book, Fosco Maraini recounts his travels to Tibet in 1939 and 1948, before it fell to China. He brings back to life a world which will never be seen again. In the tradition of Italian... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1860466931
• ISBN13: 9781860466939
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Harvill Press
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 2.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful!

I have read a lot of books about the old days in Tibet, and this is the best, despite the fact that Maraini never went to Lhasa, the holy grail of most adventurers in those days. But Mariani made no attempt to accompany his employer, the famous Tibetologist Giuseppi Tucci. Tucci claimed to be a Buddhist in order to be allowed to visit Lhasa, and Maraini wasn't a Buddhist (and suggests that Tucci wasn't either) and so chose not to try to trick or bully his way in to the capital. That alone makes him more admirable, in my book, than most of the arrogant Europeans who took it for granted that it was their God-given right to poke their noses into other people's cultures any way they could. Maraini actually travelled in Tibet on two different occasions, 1939 and 1948, and telescopes both visits in this book, although most of it is based in the 1948 trip. As an Italian, and a highly cultured European, he has a somewhat more sympathetic view of Tibet than English and American writers. He compares Tibet not to Nebraska but to Florence, the Italian Alps, Italian Catholicism, and the Vatican. While Tibet was medieval, in many ways Catholicism in the 30s and 40s could also be called medieval. Maraini thinks like a man of science, but he knows the mind of Italian peasants as well, and an old woman repeating a mantra is not so different from an old woman in Italy saying her own rosary. So there is a lot of sympathy in his view. He is also clear-sighted. He does not like dirt and smells, for example, and when he describes the Tibetans, he doesn't pretend not to notice the level of filth. He admires Buddhism, but not so much that he loses objectivity. Underground chapels which contain animal carcasses stuffed with straw and rotting away and artwork filled with skulls, human bones and bloody images horrify him, and he says so. He also conveys a wonderful sense of the beauty, the air, the silence, the scale and scope of the Tibetan land. His book is about people and events, which he describes with piercing insight and analysis. He describes faces and bodies in terms of the character they reveal. He doesn't fill pages with descriptions of ornery porters and bad trails. Instead he takes the hardships of travel for granted and describes the personality and character of every person, mountain, monastery, dance, and meal. The fact that he was not hell-bent for Lhasa allows him to be present in each place that he visits. Because he is along on the trip as a photographer, he observes the art intensely. His writing is vivid, poetic but not pretentious, and the translation from the Italian is flawless, at least as English style goes. You would never imagine that you are reading a translation. Maraini also had another advantage that makes him the perfect travel companion--he lived and taught in Japan in the years between his first and second trips to Tibet (because WW2 had broken out and he got stranded there) so he can see Tibet not only as it appear

An exceptionally fine book by an extraordinary human being.

Even though he never made it to Lhasa, which was off-limits to outsiders when this book was written, Secret Tibet is the most informative & insightful book on Tibet's history, culture & religions I have ever read, a rich & rewarding experience, the best of all books I've read on Tibet ( & I believe I've read them all). Fosco Maraini was an exceptional human being, compassionate, highly intelligent, & he wrote with poetic elegance. He was a top ethnologist, a skilled photographer, an expert mountain climber and above all, an extraordinary human being with an amazing understanding of human behavior at all levels. All of his books should be in print & read. He wrote extraordinary books on Mountain Climbing, Pearl Divers in Japan, & above all, on Japan: Meeting With Japan, one of the most amazing books I have ever read. I recommend him to anyone & everyone. You'll never regret reading him.