Ivan Kovacs was born in Hungary in 1949. Since 1963 he has been a resident of South Africa. He first made his mark on the literary scene as a poet, and his first published poem harks back to his school days. This was followed by numerous other poems and short pieces of prose which were published in a variety of South African literary journals. Kovacs's first book, "The Path to Higher States of Consciousness", was published in 2014 and is the result of a lifelong interest in Esotericism. In 2016 he published his second book, "Suburban Night and Other Poems", which contains his translations of a selection of the Hungarian poet, Attila Jozsef's poems. The present work, "Pioneers of Tibet", is his third published book in which Kovacs returns to the subject of esotericism, and in particular, his passion for Tibet.