Guido Waldman Book order (chronological)

Fosco Maraini looks back at the world he first unfolded nearly 50 years ago in his classic account of the visits he made to Tibet. He brings back to life a world which will never be seen again. In the tradition of Italian travellers from the days of Marco Polo, Maraini went to Tibet to learn, to understand, to give and to receive. His encounter with the people of Tibet, from princesses to peasants, aided as he was by a good knowledge of the language, is a true meeting of minds. The text, which attests to the disciplines of the scholar allied to the sensitivity of the poet, is enriched by the narrative value of the author's photographs, including many Buddhist temple artefacts now forever lost. From the Hardcover edition.

France, 1861. A young silk breeder has to travel overland to distant Japan, out of bounds to foreigners, to smuggle out healthy silkworms, when an epidemic has wiped out the European hatcheries. He sets eyes upon his Japanese host's concubine and is at once in love, with never a word spoken.

When an epidemic threatens to destroy the silk trade in France, the young merchant Herve Joncour leaves his doting wife and his comfortable home in the small town of Lavilledieu and travels across Siberia to the other end of the world, to Japan, to obtain eggs for a fresh breeding of silk worms. It is the 1860s; Japan is closed to foreigners and this has to be a clandestine operation. During his undercover negotiations with the local baron, Joncour's attention is arrested by the man's concubine, a girl who does not have Oriental eyes. Although the young Frenchman and the girl are unable to exchange so much as a word, love blossoms between them, conveyed by a number of recondite messages in the course of four visits the Frenchman pays to Japan. How their secret affair develops and how it unfolds is told in a narration as beautiful, smooth and seamless as a piece of the finest silk.