Our zero hour was fixed at 2 P.M. on April 29, 1944. Our plan was to dis­guise ourselves as a barbed‑wire repairing section . . . make‑up experts from the camp trans-formed us in a trice . . . Von Have and Magener got English officers’ uniforms.  We “Indians” had our heads shaved and put on turbans. Two of us carried a ladder . . . Our two “British officers” behaved very realistically. They carried rolls of blueprints under their arms and swung their swagger canes.  We passed out through the gate without causing the guards to bat an eyelid.  It was comforting to see them saluting smartly and obviously suspicious of nobody. Our seventh man arrived after us, swinging a tar‑pot energetically.  As soon as we were out of sight of the guards we vanished into the bush . . .

Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer

After his escape from a British prisoner-of-war camp in India, Heinrich Harrer spent seven years among the Tibetan People and recounted his experiences in this memoir called by the Indian novelist and travel writer Santa Rama Rau “one of the grandest and most incredible adventure stories I have ever read.”  Harrer became the unofficial secular tutor to the Dalai Lama when His Holiness was fourteen years old. He and the Dalai Lama remained lifelong friends. Seven Years in Tibet offers rare insights into Tibet’s mysticism and beauty which Harrer’s photogravures, produced from the original negatives, further illuminate..

We have bound books in many extraordinary styles‑but none so authentically exotic as Seven Years in Tibet. The cover is pure Bure silk, imported from India. Protecting the cover is a cotton sleeve, known as a “pi‑chu,” which is encased front and back by a pair of magnolia wood boards, or “lepshing.” The top board is incised with a Tibetan good‑luck charm cut by monks of the Tibetan Refugee Center in Darjeeling, India.