Stock ID #180745 The Library of Lost Horizons. An Antiquarian Voyage. TREVOR HAY.

The Library of Lost Horizons. An Antiquarian Voyage.

North Melbourne. Arden. 2023. Stock ID #180745

Black & white illustrations, xvii + 262pp, notes, bibliography. Paperback. New.

"In April 2020, the author, lamenting the end of travel as COVID spreads, turns for solace to his library of antiquarian books, in particular his collection of late nineteenth and early twentieth century works of exploration in Central Asia and Tibet. He rereads these scholarly accounts of epic journeys, thinking they may now constitute an overlooked or forgotten genre of nonfiction travel writing. From there he wanders into fiction with James Hilton's tale of Shangri-La, Lost Horizon, and Italo Calvino's tale of Marco Polo, Invisible Cities, pursuing an ever-receding horizon separating 'real and unreal' in the 'Land of Illusion' conjured up by writers of both fiction and non-fiction.

His books lead him to reflect on his own last trip to China, to the Gobi Desert, and Dunhuang, oasis gateway to 'the Silk Road' on the fringe of what is now Xinjiang, where, in 2018, he visited the Caves of a Thousand Buddhas, repository of fabulous ancient art and manuscripts and site of Cave 17, 'The Library Cave'. This gloomy niche within an unprepossessing cave once contained a Chinese translation of the Diamond Sutra, the world's oldest dated printed book, pre-dating the works of the Gutenberg press by almost six hundred years. It, and a cache of treasures hidden from sight for over a thousand years, was removed from the caves by Sir Aurel Stein in 1907. The author reflects on the present emptiness of the Library Cave and seeks to understand the riddle of the Diamond Sutra, now housed in the British Library. He is haunted by the irony of its lesson, despite its own longevity, on the impermanence of all things.

In late 2021 an old friend and teacher dies, adding to the author's depression, but bequeathing him the jewels of another library, and, as he pores over works on Buddhism and Taoism, discovering notes and bookmarks left by their previous owner, he finds a translation of the Diamond Sutra by the famous English scholar Sir Joseph Needham. There is also, in a footnote to Needham's colossal twenty-four volume work on Chinese civilisation, a single, brief sentence that causes the author to re-consider his notions of emptiness and impermanence, and to turn back to his library, to his own memories of travel, and the things of 'that inner mind' that sustained the explorers, soldiers, scholars, mystics and missionaries of his antiquarian collection – and the protagonist of Lost Horizon." (Publisher's description).

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