Mandala of Sherlock Holmes [Paperback]

Jamyang Norbu (Author), Jamyang Norbu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 5, 2001

In 1891, the public was horrified to learn that Sherlock Holmes had perished in a deadly struggle with the archcriminal Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. Then, to their amazement, he reappeared two years later, informing the stunned Watson: 'I travelled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhasa' Nothing has been known of those two missing years until Jamyang Norbu's discovery, in a rusting tin dispatch box in Darjeeling, of a flat packet carefully wrapped in waxed paper and neatly tied with stout twine. When opened the packet revealed Hurree Chunder Mookerjee's own account of his travels with Sherlock Holmes. Now, for the first time, we learn of Sherlock Holmes's brush with the Great Game, with Colonel Creighton, Lurgan Sahib and the world of Kim. We follow him north across the hot and 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 splendour that is Lhasa, intrigue and black treachery stalk the shadows, and in the remote and icy fastnesses of the Trans-Himalayas good and evil battle for ascendancy. As Patrick French has written, 'Read this, and your view of the great detective will never the same again.'

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A total success ... If you are a fan of the detective, you must read it." -- Daily Express "'The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes' is a witty fast-paced piece of entertainment of which Arthur Conan Doyle might have been proud." -- Times Literary Supplement 'This book is brilliant... If you are a fan of the detective, you must read it' -- Daily Express --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Jamyang Norbu is director of the Amnye Machen Institute at the Tibetan Centre for Advanced Studies in Dharamsala and has lectured on Tibetan culture and the Tibetan freedom struggle all over the world. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 287 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers; 2nd edition (March 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 8172233698
• ISBN-13: 978-8172233693
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,830,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A James Bond story with a serious twist, December 27, 2000

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mandala of Sherlock Holmes (Paperback)

When you buy this book, make sure you have a free evening or weekend in front of you. Once started you cannot stop. The book demonstrates how the world is shrinking. Who would have imagined that a Tibetan would be able to write, perfectly, a book in the style of Conan Doyle. It is so realistic that I started to wonder if it was indeed a late discovered manuscript. Even though nothing is sacrificed for the excitement of the story the books imparts useful and interesting information about Buddhism, Shambala, the Dalai Lama, Tibet and its occupation by China. The story is an excellent script for a movie. It will rival the James Bond movies for excitement but with a serious twist.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Can this be woven into Holmes' biography?, February 20, 2003

By 

Hadar Aviram (Albany, California United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes (Paperback)

This is quite a different take on Holmes. The writing style, the atmosphere, the characters and the scenery are very good, and some parts of the plot have been cunningly devised to provide better explanations for post-Richenbach Sherlockiana.
I understand why some people did not like this book, despite the excellent writing; the end of the book weaves Holmes' rationality with the occult and the mystical. Reading this book was a special experience for me; it does add a layer to Holmes' already complex nature, which may be challenging to reconcile with the image we know so well from Conan-Doyle's works. But if you're open enough to absorb different takes on our hero, you'll enjoy this immensely, as have I.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Winning Story Stumbles at the End, October 10, 2001

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mandala of Sherlock Holmes (Paperback)

Most people who know a little about Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series know that at one point Doyle got sick of the detective series and killed off his star character, only to be forced into "resurrecting" him after a two year absence. Here, in one of the many, many, many, modern takes on the Holmes series, eminent Tibetan author Norbu details Holmes adventures incognito in India and Tibet during those two years. The role of Dr. Watson (both as bumbling sidekick and chronicler) is here assumed by Hurree Chandar Mookerjee, a Bengali spy lifted from yet another work of fiction, Rudyard Kipling's "Kim" (and just to be totally clear, he was based on a real Indian who spied for the British!). The adventures initially consist of a plot by the henchmen of Holmes' now-dead nemesis, Moriarity, to avenge their leader's death. Holmes ends up hiding out and getting the notion to make a pilgrimage to Lhasa to meet the Dalai Lama-something strictly forbidden for Westerners. This leads to the second main adventure, which involves helping the young 13th Dalai Lama (a man critical to real-life modern Tibetan history) evade the deadly machinations of the powerful Manchu Imperial agents in Lhasa.

Norbu should first and foremost be commended for being able to almost perfectly capture the correct period speech for each character (there is a lengthy glossary at the back for all the Hinustani phrases and period slang). I say" almost" because I found Hurree's speech to be just a little too over the top, even for the type of educated servant of the Empire he is-it's just a shade too forced at times. Norbu has also captured the period perfectly and manages to seamlessly insert his own agenda by portraying early Chinese imperialism in Tibet. The portrayal of Holmes is excellent (enthusiastic, abrasive, arrogant, drug abuser) up to a point. That point is the final quarter of the book which starts melding the Holmesian world of deduction and reason with the Tibetan world of mysticism and occult powers. Up until then, I had been having great fun, but once people started throwing around hellfire and erecting mental shields and whatnot, I lost faith and interest in the whole exercise. It's not that I'm prejudiced against such things (I've played sword and sorcery role-playing games for 15 years), I just don't think they belong in the hyper-deductive world of Sherlock Holmes. It's well known that Conan Doyle had a strong belief in the occult and was fascinated with the spirit world, but to mix that in with Holmes just rubs me wrong.