LAMA WITH A GUN

A Mongolian rebel leader enlists real and unseen forces to fight for his ancestral homeland in Augenstein’s historical novel.

This exhaustively researched, bloody, and compelling work of historical fiction, set in late 19th- and early 20th-century Asia and parts of Russia, is narrated in the distinctive voice of Ja Lama, the real-life militant leader and Buddhist monk who fomented years of rebellion against Chinese rule over Mongolia. The author presents readers with a cruel, charismatic figure who intimidates and manipulates followers and opponents alike with the single-minded conviction that his leadership is preordained; with his carefully cultivated mystique, he seems to possess supernatural mental powers (his paranormal aspect is given unsettling credibility, despite an occasional sly wink from Ja Lama suggesting otherwise). Even as an 8-year-old, traveling with his parents out of Russia to their Mongolian homeland, Ja Lama is aware of his destiny as the reincarnation of the legendary 18th century anti-Manchu rebel leader, Amursanaa: “I was to be a great leader, to bring our peoples back to the respect and greatness we once had, when the haughty fell before our arrows, and our cavalry slashed across the whole known world.” On that grueling wagon trip from the banks of the Volga River, Ja Lama experiences his first hallucinatory vision of Agharti, the golden, subterranean kingdom of legend, a vision at odds with his arrival in an impoverished city in Inner Mongolia, but a place he will strive to reach all his life. Set against the upheaval of WWI and the Russian Revolution and supported by historical facts, Ja Lama’s reimagined life is a gripping saga that spans his abuse as a monk in training, his burgeoning mental gifts, an act of extreme violence that shaped him, military failures and successes, stints in Russia as a political prisoner, a years-long hermit’s retreat, torture both borne and inflicted, a final betrayal, and the chilling nemesis who haunts his life (be warned: The book contains numerous graphic descriptions of brutality and bloodshed, based on history and historical rumor).

A memorable voice and compelling (and graphically violent) melding of fact and fiction.