The Dream of Lhasa

The Life of Nikolay Przhevalsky (1839–1888), Explorer of Central Asia

Donald Rayfield

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571300440
• Year: 2013

The great Russian explorer Nikolay Przhevalsky (1839-1888) made an indelible contribution to the world's atlases, and its store of zoological and botanical knowledge, as a consequence of his four arduous and dangerous expeditions through the Central Asia of Western Mongolia, Eastern Turkestan and Northern Tibet.

Donald Rayfield's biography of Przhevalsky - first published in 1976 and drawing on the exporer's diaries, letters, and published works - tells the thrilling story of the explorer's groundbreaking journeys, undertaken in an age of extreme political sensitivity between Russia, China and Britain. A rich portrait emerges of an extraordinary Byronic character who was ill-suited to civilisation but much at home with the loneliness and hardship of the nomadic life. A rigorous army officer and a phenomenal shot, gifted also with a photographic memory, Przhevalsky became one of the most widely-admired men in Russia, and Rayfield adroitly explores the grounds of his reputation.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Introduction
• 1: The Making of an Explorer
• 2: Siberian Jungle
• 3: Two Mongolian Winters
• 4: Invitation to Lhasa
• 5: Lob Nor Rediscovered
• 6: The Great Tibetan Expedition
• 7: The Eagle’s Nest
• 8: Conflicts and Conquests
• 9: Dreams and Fulfilment
• Select Bibliography
• Index
• Plates
• Copyright