Tales of Tibet [Paperback]

Herbert J. Batt (Author), Tsering Shakya (Foreword), Alai (Contributor), Herbert Batt (Contributor), Feng Liang (Contributor), Ge Fei (Contributor), Geyang (Contributor), Ma Jian (Contributor), Ma Yuan (Contributor), Sebo (Contributor), Tashi Dawa (Contributor), Yan Geling (Contributor), Yangdon (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 28, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0742500535 | ISBN-13: 978-0742500532

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fourteen stories by young writers from China and Tibet are collected in Tales of Tibet: Sky Burials, Wind Horses, and Prayer Wheels (edited and trans. by Herbert Batt), a volume intended to record and dramatize the relationship between Tibetans and their Chinese colonizers. Both groups of writers focus on the venerable Buddhist traditions of Tibet. The country's history under foreign powers and its role as spiritual mecca undergird the tales, which feature, variously, a Tibetan beggar who claims to own a rich man's house, a British commander who invades Tibet in 1904 and a Buddhist nun who achieves a state of perfect compassion.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

The first secular, literary anthology of its kind in English. . . . A collection of 14 gritty stories, the book features a solid preface by Tsering Shakya, which offers excellent context for Batt's strong translations. . . . An engaging, purposeful anthology. Highly recommended. (Choice Magazine )

[Tales of Tibet] should be read by all those who are interested in current development in Tibet and who are fond of good literature. (Martin Slobodnik Asian And African Studies )

Offers a fascinating insight into the way Tibetans perceive themselves and the way they are seen by their colonisers. (Tibet Alive )

An exciting anthology that will not disappoint literature lovers. Herbert Batt has translated into English for the first time some of the best stories about Tibet written in Chinese. His solid translations meet the challenge of rendering in English such varied literary styles as realism, magical realism, and even surrealism….A splendid foreword by Tsering Shakya introduces the difficult and almost unstudied subject of modern literature produced in the Tibetan territories. (Persimmon )

[T]his collection…is of the utmost importance….The “Tibet” evoked in these stories is haunting—the characters are rich and deep, and the styles of the writers are subtle and poignant. (World Literature Today )

[Tales of Tibet] should be read by all those who are interested in current development in Tibet and who are fond of good literature..... (Martin Slobodnik Asian And African Studies )

[T]his collection?is of the utmost importance?.The ?Tibet? evoked in these stories is haunting?the characters are rich and deep, and the styles of the writers are subtle and poignant..... (World Literature Today )

A landmark. . . . What we find inside...is a body of work to be marveled at, that has as yet hardly been seriously studied in the languages in which it is written, let alone in English. . . . They reward the reading of anyone interested in contemporary fiction....Great art is rare to come by, and the splendours of Tibetan New Fiction have not yet received the tribute they deserve. (New Left Review )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (July 28, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0742500535
• ISBN-13: 978-0742500532
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,278,245 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Earth is a Triangle, December 16, 2002

By 

Sylvia Warsh (Toronto, Ontario, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tales of Tibet (Paperback)

As someone uninitiated in Tibetan Buddhism and literature, I found the stories in Tales of Tibet engrossing; at times troubling and inexplicable. Unlike western stories, which tend toward resolution, or at least some kind of ending, these tales remain elusive, their questions unresolved, and quite often, the end is no end at all. Indeed, in many of the stories, the purpose seems to be to obfuscate, to confuse, to show the reader there are no answers here because there are no answers in life. But the more I read, the more the stories intrigued me. I learned about Buddhist doctrine, which maintains that all our perceptions of ourselves and the cosmos are a dream. This didn't ease my confusion, rather it helped me to accept it.

I also learned a little about the politics of the region. That some Tibetan authors feel strongly that to write in Chinese about their homeland is wrong. One writer likens it to trying to attach a deer's antlers to the head of an ox. The language of the colonizer will result only in distortion. Despite this debate, stories written in Chinese have a much larger circulation, reaching beyond the Tibetan-speaking population with its high illiteracy rate. These 14 stories are translated sensitively from the original Chinese by the author.

During the British invasion of Tibet, a Tibetan abbot tells the British Colonel, who will soon massacre soldiers trying to surrender, that "The earth is not round. It is a triangle, like the shoulder bone of a sheep." In the end, the Colonel loses to the anti-scientific spiritualist abbot.

A young postman risks his life in a snowstorm on the grasslands to deliver newspapers to a village where no one can read. In another story a writer meets his own characters in a colossal palm print, a labyrinth of gullies created when the Lotus Master battled with a demon. These stories are a revelation about a country most of us can only visit in our dreams.