A Year in Tibet - Tapa dura

‘Arresting vignettes in a fascinating account of the year that the author and a film crew spent in a village in a remote corner of Tibet. The book is far more than a thin spin–off of the television series. Sun Shuyun, who studied Tibetan at Oxford, uses it to chart a much more personal and sometimes painful journey.’ Daily Telegraph

'What does come through ringing clear is the Tibetan people's remarkable serenity even in the midst of terrible hardships.' The Daily Mail

Praise for ‘The Long March’:

'An impressive job of on-the-ground reporting, interweaving the memories of survivors to build up the narrative... ' Observer

'Sun Shuyun provides a sympathetic account, and...all the more refreshing because of the grit of her own travails.' The Times

'[Sun Shuyun's] is a lively and very human account.' Sunday Telegraph

'From the ocean of lies about the Long March she has salvaged much truth. I hope...Shuyun writes more books...' Literary Review

Praise for ‘Ten Thousand Miles without a Cloud’:

'Packed with erudition and perception...it is also honest, sensitive, entirely without ego...ultimately, a meditation on the human condition.' Evening Standard

'Sun Shuyun records her feelings and those of others with spontaneous simplicity, almost innocence, as if she were still the child seeking her grandmother's solution.' Sunday Telegraph

‘A Year in Tibet’ follows the author as she lives for eighteen months in a remote village in Tibet.

Sun Shuyun grew up in China and has always been fascinated by Tibet and Buddhism. Now, accompanied by a television crew of Chinese and Tibetans, she spent a year in a remote town in the Tibetan mountain area and recorded what life is like for the people there. After half a century of Communist rule, Gyantse, once celebrated by early twentieth-century British explorers, has like the rest of Tibet seen the return of religion and much of the traditional way of life-but for how long? Sun Shuyun explores the intimate details of the lives of a shaman and his family, or monks, a village doctor, a Party worker, a hotel manager, and a rickshaw driver. Through them she captures the tensions between Chinese and Tibetans, between an ancient and an alien culture, faith and science, continuity and modernisation. This is a book with a difference: unusually, a realistic Chinese voice is calling for better understanding of a people who try to carve out the path they desire, often against the odds, often with joy and hope. Vivid, fascinating and visually brilliant, a Year in Tibet provides a rare insight into a Tibetan community under the pressure of change: from centuries of isolation through a difficult past to an uncertain present.