Plot summary

Charles Houston makes a perilous and illegal journey from India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 into the forbidden land of Tibet

Tibet

Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...

 during the unsettled time 1950/51, in the hope of rescuing his vanished brother. What he does not know is that his coming was prophesied a century earlier, and he is awaited by an impossible love, an enormous treasure, and the invading Red Chinese army

People's Liberation Army

The People's Liberation Army is the unified military organization of all land, sea, strategic missile and air forces of the People's Republic of China. The PLA was established on August 1, 1927 — celebrated annually as "PLA Day" — as the military arm of the Communist Party of China...

.

Critical opinion

Graham Greene

Graham Greene

Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...

 said of the novel: "I hadn’t realised how much I had missed the genuine adventure story until I read The Rose of Tibet", while Daphne du Maurier

Daphne du Maurier

Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning DBE was a British author and playwright.Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now". The first three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock.Her elder sister was...

 wrote: 'It has all the excitement of King Solomon's Mines

King Solomon's Mines

King Solomon's Mines is a popular novel by the Victorian adventure writer and fabulist Sir H. Rider Haggard. It tells of a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party...

Author Barry Gifford

Barry Gifford

Barry Gifford is an American author, poet, and screenwriter known for his distinctive mix of American landscapes and film noir- and Beat Generation-influenced literary madness....

considers this book the one he wishes he had written. He has written about it in his collection of essays The Cavalry Charges and has called it 'a genuine work of literature. I was immediately charmed by the device Davidson employed to entice the reader into believing he's headed in one direction and then opening up an entirely unexpected can of bedazzling worms.' Gifford goes on to say 'I re-read The Rose of Tibet every few years and each time am transfixed, transported. Among so many books, poems and songs that I love, it's the one that I wish I'd written. The Rose of Tibet is also the one novel I'd really love to write the screenplay for.'