The Last of Earth by Deepa Anappara review – into Tibet’s ‘Forbidden Kingdom’

The follow-up to Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line explores the history of colonial exploration through a perilous 19th-century odysseyWith her peripatetic and philosophical second novel, Deepa Anappara travels into uncharted territory. Her dazzling 2020 debut, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, was part caper and part social satire, set in an Indian shantytown. In The Last of Earth, she points her writerly compass towards the mountains of mid-19th-century Tibet – a region then closed off to European imperialists – to meditate on the chequered history of colonial exploration, cartography and the impermanence of human existence.“It’s in the nature of white men to believe they own the world, that no door should be shut to them.” For years, the British train, coax and bribe Indians to cross over, conducting surveying expeditions on their behalf; they also venture into the “Forbidden Kingdom of Tibet” in thinly veiled disguises. Intricately researched and meticulou