Customer Reviews

Red star over Tibet

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Red Star Over Tibet is a objective and a highly personal account of China's invasion of Tibet in 1959 as seen from the eyes of a brilliant young Tibetan. The writing is beautiful and author deserves appreciation for his mastery of the English language, which he uses with a journalist's skill of exposition and a historian's eye for detail. What makes the book all the more interesting is that Norbu tells the story of Tibetans excape into India, by using his family, mostly frequently his mother, as a medium of his narration. Whilst books on Tibet abound, this is worth reading for the author's serious efforts at objectivity despite his intimacy to this tragic subject. Professor Dawa Norbu is one of the most renowned scholars on Tibetan issue now. But the book was written when the writer was in twenties and much before his academic success.(Professor Dawa Norbu, who now teaches at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, holds a Ph.D from U.C. Berkeley). Anyone with a geniune interest in learning more about Tibet and this human tragedy, but not willing to get into the current Hollywood hype on Tibet, should read it. And the book is cheap,too! (Tsering Namgyal Khortsa

Dawa Norbu, in his simple account of the life of the ordinary Tibetan in feudal Tibet, succeeds in his portrayal of the invasion where the Heinrich Harrers and the Tarings fail. Much of the romanticism surrounding Tibet and the Tibetan is perpetuated by a wretched handful, helped gaily along by a western set looking for spiritual investment. The realities of life, medeival to the extreme, in 20th century Tibet could not be further removed. Displacement then was not horseback riding, bandoliered escorts and wireless messsages - it was desparate running, frostbite and hunger. The fact that Tibet lost its freedom in the first place, is deplorable. However, what is disturbing is the reliance of the freedom movement on the same petty nobility that lost it to the Chinese in the first place. Whilst the common man still sacrifices and self immolates, these leaders collect antiques and have their children at Harvard. Tibet must be free, but we must do it ourselves and when it is free, there must be democracy.

A great read for anyone interested in Tibet.