Stephanie Wolfe Murray - A Life in Books
A glimpse into a lost world, a country that was bursting with ancient charm. During the 1980s Tibet briefly opened to foreign travellers. Backpackers like Wolfe Murray were allowed to wander freely for up to three months – but very few had the gall to make it their home, as Wolfe Murray attempted.
Why I wrote this book?
"I've had cause to justify using the cliché ‘I couldn't put it down’ on very few occasions, and this is one of them. It really is unputdownable - a highly unlikely but irresistible combination of Robert Byron and Hunter S. Thompson.’ - Charles Ramble, Director of Studies in Tibetan History and Philology at the EPHE (Sorbonne), Paris.
Book summary
“Wolfe-Murray’s trick is to deliver stunningly unusual observations deadpan...The descriptions of the rioting in Lhasa – which the author witnessed by accident and parlayed into his first outing as a foreign correspondent – are brilliant, particularly because he gives a compelling eyewitness account without putting his own dramatic experience of danger at the centre of things.” Kevin Sullivan
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“This is an amazing book and I’m so glad the author lived to tell the tale… it felt like a miracle that he did! It is an almost unbelievable story, consisting of a million almost unbelievable stories – utterly hilarious, or quirky, or hair-raising, or disturbing, and all of them memorable! I find his no-nonsense style of telling very attractive." Gabriella Bullock
“It reads well, with fine touches of humour and a refreshing absence of self-importance...The Tibet section catches well the atmosphere, the spirit, the significance of events at the time. The pen-portraits that he paints of people he met there are sharply drawn, catching our foibles and our dialogue very well. It works.” Robbie Barnett, Professor of Tibetan Studies, Columbia University, NYC.