Synopses & Reviews
The first English translation of Tibet's founding myth, written by an acclaimed winner of the Mao Dun Prize, China's top literary award, and impeccably translated The Song of King Gesar is one of the world's great epics, as significant for Tibetans as the Odyssey and Iliad for the ancient Greeks, and as the Ramayana and Mahabarata in India. Passed down in song from one generation to the next, it is sung by Tibetan bards even today. Set partly in ancient Tibet, where evil spirits mingle with the lives of humans, and partly in the modern day, the tale tells of two lives inextricably entwined. Gesar, the youngest and bravest of the gods, has been sent down to the human world to defeat the demons that plague the lives of ordinary people. Jigmed is a young shepherd, who is visited by dreams of Gesar, of gods, and of ancient battles while he sleeps. So begins an epic journey for both the shepherd and the king. The willful child of the gods will become Gesar, the warrior-king of Ling, and will unite the nation of Tibet under his reign. Jigmed will learn to see his troubled country with new eyes, and, as the storyteller chosen by the gods, must face his own destiny.
Review
"A thrilling, beautiful and moving epic, reminding us again of the timeless and exhilarating magic of pure story-telling. Alai opens up a world previously unknown to us, a foreign and yet strangely familiar world." —Tan Twan Eng, author, The Garden of Evening Mists
Synopsis
A lively and cinematic twentieth-century epic, Red Poppies focuses on the extravagant and brutal reign of a clan of Tibetan warlords during the rise of Chinese Communism. The story is wryly narrated by the chieftain's son, a self-professed "idiot" who reveals the bloody feuds, seductions, secrets, and scheming behind his family's struggles for power. When the chieftain agrees to grow opium poppies with seeds supplied by the Chinese Nationalists in exchange for modern weapons, he draws Tibet into the opium trade -- and unwittingly plants the seeds for a downfall. A "swashbuckling novel" (New York Times Book Review), Red Poppies is at once a political parable and a moving elegy to the lost kingdom of Tibet in all its cruelty, beauty, and romance.
About the Author
Alai is an ethnic Tibeta living in Chengdu, Sichuan, the award-winning author of a number of short story collections, and the editor of China's largest science fiction journal, Science Fiction World. His first novel was rejected by numerous publishers over a number of years for its sensitive political content. The novel finally made its way to China's prestigious People's Literature Publishing House, where an editor fell in love with it and championed its publication. In Howard Goldblatt's opinion, only an established, politically connected editor could risk the displeasure of the censors. The novel was published in 1998 to critical acclaim and became an immediate bestseller, and in 2000 it was given China's highest literary award, the Mao Dun Prize. Red Poppies is the first novel in a projected trilogy.HOWARD GOLDBLATT and SYLVIA LI-CHUN LIN are translators of Chu T'ien-wen's Notes of a Desolate Man, which was named the 1999 Translation of the Year by the American Literary Translators Association. They live in South Bend, Indiana.SYLVIA LI-CHUN LIN and HOWARD GOLDBLATT are translators of Chu T'ien-wen's Notes of a Desolate Man, which was named the 1999 Translation of the Year by the American Literary Translators Association. They live in South Bend, Indiana.