Tales of Tibet: Sky Burials, Prayer Wheels, and Wind Horses

Vivid images of Tibet spring to life in this landmark book, the first to offer a selection of fiction by Tibetan authors, both men and women, ever published in the English-speaking world. In translation from the original Chinese, contemporary Tibetan and Chinese writers lead us to a numinous land above the clouds.

Narratives of Tibetan hunters, Buddhist rituals, and burial ceremonies lure us into haunting and unfamiliar settings where life, death, love--the universal themes of literature--assume a magical aura. The Tibetan writers depict the struggles of contemporary Tibet through the eyes of traditional Buddhist culture. The Chinese authors use that same culture to create an alternative oriental model for China as it confronts a tidal wave of western rational materialism. Thus the drama of contemporary Chinese culture is shifted into a unifying Tibetan perspective: time revolves in an eternal circle, progress is illusion, and all actions lead to nothing.

These literary gems--several banned in China--will captivate students and general readers looking for a unique encounter with a Tibet struggling to maintain its age-old civilization under the cultural onslaught of the Chinese regime.