Action Mundy, Talbot: Old Ugly Face. V1. 20 Mar 2012

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Talbot Mundy (born William Lancaster Gribbon) (April 23, 1879 – August 5, 1940) was an English writer. He also wrote under the pseudonym Walter Galt. Born in London, at age 16 he ran away from home and began an odyssey in India, Africa, and other parts of the Near and Far East. By age 29, he had begun using the name Talbot Mundy, and a year later arrived in the United States, starting his writing career in 1911. His first published work was the short story "Pig-Sticking in India", which describes a popular, though now outlawed, sport practiced by British forces.

Old Ugly Face is the nickname of a Tibetan lama, the Ringding Gelong Lama Lopsang Pun, an ascetic with an infectious laugh, a penchant for flogging sin out of wayward monks, and the power to overcome all obstacles in his way. This is the second novel dealing with Old Ugly Face s effort to protect Tibetan religious traditions from Russian, Japanese, and Chinese intrigue just prior to World War II, a sequel to the novel The Thunder Dragon Gate.

It also continues the story of Elsa Burbage and her husband Tom Grayne, whom she left behind in a Tibe-tan cave to return to Darjeeling to have their child. The child was born, however, at 17,000 feet in the Himalayas during a blizzard, yet made it through that ordeal only to die after arriving safely in India. Elsa wishes to return to Tom, and persuades the American adventurer Andrew Gunning the man who brought her out of Tibet to let her join him in his clandestine journey back to Tom.

This fast-paced adventure novel by Talbot Mundy is one of the greatest novels ever written of the rigors and tests of the spiritual path. It is Mundy at his best.

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