The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes

In 1891, the British 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 its amazement, he reappeared two years later, informing a stunned Watson, 'I traveled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhasa.' Nothing has been known of those 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 Huree Chunder Mookerjee's (Kipling's Bengali spy and scholar) own account of his travels with Sherlock Holmes. Now for the first time, we learn of Holmes's brush with the Great Game and the world of Kim. We follow him north across the hot and duty 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 splendor that is Lhasa, intrigue and black treachery stalk the shadows, and Sherlock Holmes confronts his greatest challenge. Jamyang Norbu is one of Tibet's foremost writers at work today. He is a director of the Amnye Machen Institute, Tibetan Center for Advanced Studies, Dharamsala. He is the author of several books, five plays, numerous pamphlets, and a traditional opera libretto. He is also the winner of the Crossword Award for English Fiction, 2000, India's equivalent of the Booker Prize. 'A wonderful and convincing pastiche...The story comes out in beautifully imagined late Victorian cadences...an engrossing combination of East and West, old and young, conventional storytelling and loving parody.' -The Washington Post 'A credible invention and an engaging entertainment...a page-turning thriller.' -The Boston Globe 'A stimulating addition to the Holmesian bookshelf.' -Portland Oregonian 'The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes ranks heads above the plethora of pastic A new Sherlock Holmes mystery worthy of the master Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself.