Tibet at the close of the 19th century, entering the 20th — tumultuous time full of anguish for a country falling prey to the grasp of foreign desires: the British seeking to further their regional economic force and the Manchu Dynasty shamelessly incorporating Western lands into Chinese precincts while trying relentlessly to reduce the temporal and religious power of the 13th Dalai Lama.
Tashi, former monk, now spy for the British, and Namgyal, officer of the special security in charge of protecting the Dalai Lama, embody the tensions and contradictions of this troubled time. Their loves and adventures ground an alternating narrative, while a mirror passed from hand to hand testifies to mysterious connections between the two men.
Elegant and captivating, the novel paints a portrait of Tibetan culture, Tibetan Buddhism and the numerous geopolitical stakes playing out on in Tibet at that time.
« I read with great interest and pleasure Corinne Atlan's Tibetan novel. I discovered with a pleasant surprise the rightness of tone of her evocation of Tibet, the seriousness of her documentation and the quality of her writing. » (Matthieu Ricard)
Corinne Atlan, author of more than sixty Japanese translations into French, is well-known among lovers of Japanese literature. After graduating from the prestigious French Langues Orientales at twenty, she began a two-year stay in Japan. She then moved to Nepal where she lived for ten years. There she taught French and studied both Nepalese and Sanskrit while living immersed in the Tibetan world in Nepal. Today she shares her time between Paris and Kyoto. The Horseman and a Mirror is her second novel.
