author
Martin Louis Alan Gompertz
1886–1951
An Indian-born British soldier turned storyteller, he wrote under the name "Ganpat" and drew heavily on his years in the army for vivid adventure fiction. His books often head for the Himalayas, mixing frontier atmosphere with romance, danger, and occasional science-fiction ideas.
1 Audiobook
Harilek : A romance
by Martin Louis Alan Gompertz
About the author
Born in India in 1886, Martin Louis Alan Gompertz became known to readers by the pen name Ganpat, a nickname said to come from the way his Indian troops pronounced his surname. He served in the Indian Army, wrote about his East Africa service for Blackwood's Magazine, and later retired from the army in 1939.
As a novelist, he was best known for adventure stories often compared with H. Rider Haggard's style. Much of his fiction is set in the Himalayas, and sources also credit him with writing science fiction as well as travel books on Ladakh and western Tibet.
He died in 1951. While he is not a widely known name today, his work still stands out for its mix of military experience, mountain settings, and old-school popular storytelling.