Lecture: To the Mysteries of India, Tibet, and Beyond: The Worlds of Talbot Mundy

[Guest guest]

July 25, 2007, 12:10 pm

Mary Pickford Theater

James Madison Bldg., 3rd floor

1st & Independence Ave., SE

Washington, DC 20540

 

Metro stop: Capitol South on the Blue or Orange Line.

 

 

The Library of Congress Professional Association What If ... Science Fiction &

Fantasy Forum

and the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, & Recorded Sound Division

present

 

To the Mysteries of India, Tibet, and Beyond:

The Worlds of Talbot Mundy

 

A presentation by Brian Taves

 

author, Talbot Mundy: Philosopher of Adventure

editor, Winds From the East:

An Anthology of Stories, Articles, and Poems by Talbot Mundy

 

A book signing will follow and copies will be available for purchase

 

 

In 1895, 16-year-old Talbot Mundy fled the Victorian upbringing of his native

England for a life of adventure. He crossed the entire northern frontier of

India, into Tibet, spent four years in Africa, and traveled the Middle East in

the wake of World War I.

 

Colonial odysseys of the time led most writers to echo Rudyard Kipling's support

of British imperialism, Sax Rohmer's " yellow peril, " or Joseph Conrad' bleak

" heart of darkness. " Not Mundy. His fantasy-adventure books challenged

assumptions of Western cultural superiority in favor of Eastern religious

teaching and feminism. His ground-breaking fiction in the 1910s through the

1930s was influential in his own time and is still widely read.

 

An excerpt from the 1953 movie, KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES, adapted from one of

Mundy's best-known novels, will be included in the presentation.