Forbidden Journey: The Life of Alexandra David-Neel

Recounts the life of the prolific author, inveterate explorer, pioneer feminist, and world authority on Tibetan Buddhist tantric rites

Explorer, feminist and an authority on Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan tantrism, Paris-born Louise Eugenie Alexandrine Marie David (18681969) was the author of 30 books on anthropology, geography, history, orientalism and philologyall, like her life, crammed with adventure. Nearing middle age and retired as an opera singer, she became the mistress and, subsequently, the wife of Philip Neel, a philandering French engineer in Tunis, whose financial support enabled her to spend her remaining life away from him. Eventually, disguised as a Tibetan beggar and having meanwhile adopted as her son a young Tibetan, she arrived at last in Lhasa in the winter of 1924, the first European woman to enter that forbidden city. Thereafter, until she died at the age of 101, she settled in southeastern France, in a villa named Fortress of Meditation, and received honors, awards, accolades from scholars, governments and institutions of learning. Despite its idiosyncratic manner and style, this romantic biography, relying extensively on David-Neel's letters and papers, adequately tells the story of an extraordinarily courageous woman. Barbara Foster teaches at Hunter College in Manhattan, Michael Foster is the author of Freedom's Thunder, a novel. Photos.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Born in 1858, Frenchwoman David-Neel went to London at 20 to study occultism, flirted with anarchism, and sang with an opera company that toured Indochina. At age 40 she began to write and lecture on Buddhism. At 55 she entered Tibet from China, traversed the mountains on foot, and became the first European woman to enter the holy city of Lhasa. The manuscripts that she brought out and translated preserve much of the culture that would otherwise be lost. This first biography in English is based on interviews, on David-Neel's books and letters, and on dossiers kept by governments that thought she was a spy. It takes care to explain the religious and cultural backgrounds and should appeal to general readers as well as scholars. Sally Mitchell, English Dept., Temple Univ., Philadelphia
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.