Eat the Buddha
Life and Death in A Tibetan Town
Book - 2020
"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
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.
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From Library Staff
From Library Staff
Eat the Buddha by Barbara Demick - A fascinating and compelling history of Ngaba, a Tibetan town known for its high volume of self immolating monks. Focusing on a handful of Tibetans who lived through the CCP’s takeover, Eat the Buddha grounds Tibet’s tragedy in the personal. One of the best book... Read More »
A fascinating and compelling history of Ngaba, a Tibetan town known for its high volume of self immolating monks. Focusing on a handful of Tibetans who lived through the CCP’s takeover, Eat the Buddha grounds Tibet’s tragedy in the personal. One of the best books I’ve read all year.
A fascinating and compelling history of Ngaba, a Tibetan town known for its high volume of self immolating monks. Focusing on a handful of Tibetans who lived through the CCP’s takeover, Eat the Buddha grounds Tibet’s tragedy in the personal. One of the best books I’ve read all year.
"A portrait of one town reveals Tibet's tragic past. [...] Memorable voices inform a penetrating, absorbing history."
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Add a CommentFrom The Economist's Books of the Year (2020): "This is the grippingly told story of Ngaba, a county seat near the edge of the Tibetan plateau, and of the sufferings of its people under the Chinese Communist Party’s rule. Exploring an area rarely visited by foreigners, the author paints striking portraits of people living there, with a fine eye for detail and a keen grasp of Tibet’s history."
I really liked this story about the people who care so much about their right to practice their religion and live their lives as they choose that they self-immolate as a means of protesting against the Chinese government. The reporter talks with many of the people living in Tibet, and tells her tale through the lives of people who lived there. Many have fled to India. I learned a lot about the history of Tibet and China.
Insightful history with current conditions in Tibet. Tragic what the Chinese have done to the dalai lama and the tibetan people.
A fascinating and compelling history of Ngaba, a Tibetan town known for its high volume of self immolating monks. Focusing on a handful of Tibetans who lived through the CCP’s takeover, Eat the Buddha grounds Tibet’s tragedy in the personal. One of the best books I’ve read all year.
The title got me into the book, and the interesting history lesson kept me going. Focusing on a group of Tibetans who live in Sichuan, an area where many Tibetans have set themselves on fire protesting China’s rule. Demick sets out to find out why 156 Buddhists have set themselves on fire, even swallowing gasoline to make sure they burn from the inside. By looking back at the history of the Tibetan uprising and the humiliating way the Chinese stripped these Tibetans of everything, even killing their yaks, Demick has a very pessimistic outlook for the future. It’s a challenging book to read, but well worth it if you are interested in the future of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism.