The valley of eyes unseen

About the book

Hugh Jevons learns that his former companion Ronald Mirlees has been found dead in a Shanghai hotel, apparently terrified by something no investigator can identify. A sealed package then arrives containing Mirlees's account of an extraordinary journey and instructions that make publishing it seem perilous. The manuscript leads into an expedition across mountains toward a concealed valley whose inhabitants claim descent from the ancient Greeks. Discovery does not bring freedom to explore: the visitors must reckon with guarded knowledge, unfamiliar authority, and questions their hosts are reluctant to answer. Collins frames the adventure as forbidden testimony, making the survival of a written account almost as important as the experiences it records. Its imagined encounter between civilizations also reflects the assumptions of contemporary European exploration fiction.

• Forbidden knowledge
• Exploration and power
• Cultural encounter

Why read it

The manuscript's ominous instructions turn the act of reading the expedition into part of the novel's mystery.

English Duckworth first publication of 1923