Eat the Buddha

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR IN FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST, NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, SPECTATOR 'You simply cannot understand China without reading Barbara Demick on Tibet' Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition In 1950, China claimed sovereignty over Tibet, leading to decades of unrest and resistance. Barbara Demick chronicles the Tibetan tragedy from Ngaba, a defiant town on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. From the stories of Ngaba's last princess and those who experienced the struggle sessions of Mao's revolution to the experiences of today's monks and townsfolk suffering repression under China's rule, Demick paints a riveting portrait of Tibet past and present as it fights for its identity against one of the most powerful countries in the world.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR IN FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST, NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, SPECTATOR 'You simply cannot understand China without reading Barbara Demick on Tibet' Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition In 1950, China claimed sovereignty over Tibet, leading to decades of unrest and resistance. Barbara Demick chronicles the Tibetan tragedy from Ngaba, a defiant town on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. From the stories of Ngaba's last princess and those who experienced the struggle sessions of Mao's revolution to the experiences of today's monks and townsfolk suffering repression under China's rule, Demick paints a riveting portrait of Tibet past and present as it fights for its identity against one of the most powerful countries in the world.

A gripping portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people, from the bestselling author of Nothing to Envy "A brilliantly reported and eye-opening work of narrative nonfiction."-- The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Parul Sehgal, The New York Times - The New York Times Book Review - The Washington Post - NPR - The Economist - Outside - Foreign Affairs Just as she did with North Korea, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick explores one of the most hidden corners of the world. She tells the story of a Tibetan town perched eleven thousand feet above sea level that is one of the most difficult places in all of China for foreigners to visit. Ngaba was one of the first places where the Tibetans and the Chinese Communists encountered one another. In the 1930s, Mao Zedong's Red Army fled into the Tibetan plateau to escape their adversaries in the Chinese Civil War. By the time the soldiers reached Ngaba, they were so hungry that they looted monasteries and ate religious statues made of flour and butter--to Tibetans, it was as if they were eating the Buddha. Their experiences would make Ngaba one of the engines of Tibetan resistance for decades to come, culminating in shocking acts of self-immolation. Eat the Buddha spans decades of modern Tibetan and Chinese history, as told through the private lives of Demick's subjects, among them a princess whose family is wiped out during the Cultural Revolution, a young Tibetan nomad who becomes radicalized in the storied monastery of Kirti, an upwardly mobile entrepreneur who falls in love with a Chinese woman, a poet and intellectual who risks everything to voice his resistance, and a Tibetan schoolgirl forced to choose at an early age between her family and the elusive lure of Chinese money. All of them face the same dilemma: Do they resist the Chinese, or do they join them? Do they adhere to Buddhist teachings of compassion and nonviolence, or do they fight? Illuminating a culture that has long been romanticized by Westerners as deeply spiritual and peaceful, Demick reveals what it is really like to be a Tibetan in the twenty-first century, trying to preserve one's culture, faith, and language against the depredations of a seemingly unstoppable, technologically all-seeing superpower. Her depiction is nuanced, unvarnished, and at times shocking.

A gripping portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people, from the bestselling author of Nothing to Envy "A brilliantly reported and eye-opening work of narrative nonfiction."-- The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Parul Sehgal, The New York Times - The New York Times Book Review - The Washington Post - NPR - The Economist - Outside - Foreign Affairs Just as she did with North Korea, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick explores one of the most hidden corners of the world. She tells the story of a Tibetan town perched eleven thousand feet above sea level that is one of the most difficult places in all of China for foreigners to visit. Ngaba was one of the first places where the Tibetans and the Chinese Communists encountered one another. In the 1930s, Mao Zedong's Red Army fled into the Tibetan plateau to escape their adversaries in the Chinese Civil War. By the time the soldiers reached Ngaba, they were so hungry that they looted monasteries and ate religious statues made of flour and butter--to Tibetans, it was as if they were eating the Buddha. Their experiences would make Ngaba one of the engines of Tibetan resistance for decades to come, culminating in shocking acts of self-immolation. Eat the Buddha spans decades of modern Tibetan and Chinese history, as told through the private lives of Demick's subjects, among them a princess whose family is wiped out during the Cultural Revolution, a young Tibetan nomad who becomes radicalized in the storied monastery of Kirti, an upwardly mobile entrepreneur who falls in love with a Chinese woman, a poet and intellectual who risks everything to voice his resistance, and a Tibetan schoolgirl forced to choose at an early age between her family and the elusive lure of Chinese money. All of them face the same dilemma: Do they resist the Chinese, or do they join them? Do they adhere to Buddhist teachings of compassion and nonviolence, or do they fight? Illuminating a culture that has long been romanticized by Westerners as deeply spiritual and peaceful, Demick reveals what it is really like to be a Tibetan in the twenty-first century, trying to preserve one's culture, faith, and language against the depredations of a seemingly unstoppable, technologically all-seeing superpower. Her depiction is nuanced, unvarnished, and at times shocking.