Synopses & Reviews
In 2002 Xinran’s
Good Women of China became an international bestseller, revealing startling new truths about Chinese life to the West. Now she returns with an epic story of love, friendship, courage and sacrifice set in Chinese-occupied Tibet.
Based on a true story, Xinran’s extraordinary second book takes the reader right to the hidden heart of one of the world’s most mysterious and inaccessible countries. In March 1958, Shu Wen learns that her husband, an idealistic army doctor, has died while serving in Tibet. Determined to find out what happened to him, she courageously sets off to join his regiment. But to her horror, instead of finding a Tibetan people happily welcoming their Chinese “liberators” as she expected, she walks into a bloody conflict, with the Chinese subject to terrifying attacks from Tibetan guerrillas. It seems that her husband may have died as a result of this clash of cultures, this disastrous misunderstanding. But before she can know his fate, she is taken hostage and embarks on a life-changing journey through the Tibetan countryside — a journey that will last twenty years and lead her to a deep appreciation of Tibet in all its beauty and brutality. Sadly, when she finally discovers the truth about her husband, she must carry her knowledge back to a China that, in her absence, has experienced the Cultural Revolution and changed beyond recognition. . .
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
It was 1994 when Xinran, a journalist and the internationally acclaimed author of
The Good Women of China, received a telephone call asking her to travel four hours to meet a woman who had just crossed the border from Tibet into China.
Xinran made the trip and met the woman, called Shu Wen, who recounted the story of her thirty-year odyssey in the vast landscape of Tibet. In Sky Burial, Xinran has re-created Shu Wens journey, painting an extraordinary portrait of a woman and a land, each at the mercy of fate and politics. It is an unforgettable, ultimately uplifting tale of love, loss, loyalty, and survival.
About the Author
Xinran was born in Beijing in 1958. In the late 1980s she began working for Chinese radio and went on to become one of China’s most successful journalists. In 1997 she moved to London, where she began work on her seminal book about Chinese women’s lives,
The Good Women of China.
From the Hardcover edition.