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

[Allen W Thrasher]

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.