Let’s just agree that Casandra Campbell is not fluent in any Asian languages – which makes her an odd (mis)casting choice for a title set mostly in Tibet, populated by mostly Tibetan characters. That said, lauded journalist Barbara Demick’s extraordinary latest is a book to...
Once adventurous Paolo de Padova has aged into the cautious first assistant to his cousin, the pope. Just before the Dalai Lama’s Vatican visit, His Holiness asks Paolo for a nearly impossible favor: to plan “an unofficial vacation” that includes the Dalai Lama. Initially Paolo thinks...
Winner of China's National Children's Literature Award, Black Flame is an engrossing, often heartstring-pulling adventure told from the point of view of a majestic, lion-like, blue-black Tibetan Mastiff. Two things kept going through my head as the pages turned swiftly: 1. the novel reads like an older...
Every new year seems to begin with a fervent prayer/wish/hope for true PEACE. So far in my own lifetime, worldwide peace hasn't been achieved. Still, I have a few more years left in me and surely enough stubbornness to believe peace can truly happen before...
Last night, six of my book hens (my mother likes to refer to my book club as "the chicken coop," which has an amusing ring to it in Korean: "kkoh-kkoh-jang") got together for a lively discussion of Canyon Sam's debut, Sky Train. Even though I...
For the average American, Tibet is not so much a troubled faraway land, but an ethereal concept marked by the kind face of the Dalai Lama, often in the company of devotee Richard Gere.
“In the West,...
All in the Name of Love in Xinran’s ‘Sky Burial’
Here’s the story: two lovers, marriage, and cruel separation by war shortly thereafter. The husband dies mysteriously, but the wife remains skeptical and embarks on...
An intimate memoir about a three-decade relationship between the Dalai Lama and the author Chan that begins with high-pitched giggles over Chan’s Fu Manchu-style mustache and ends with the gift of a...
Absolutely stunning collection of black-and-white photographs that document the lives of the Sera Jey monks of Tibet. Their Sera Monastic University, one of three great monasteries near Lhasa, Tibet, is now reestablished in South India.
Review: <a...
"It is not the accuracy of the story that concerns us," the author writes in the title's opening poem. "But who gets to tell it." Dhompa captures her fractured self...
A sweeping saga of Tibet before the Chinese occupation, told through the privileged view of the self-proclaimed “renowned idiot son” of a Tibetan chieftain.
Review: "New and Notable Fiction," AsianWeek<a href="http://bookdragonreviews.wordpress.com/files/2009/05/2002-07-18-book-supplement-fiction.pdf"...
