
Eat the Buddha
Life and Death in a Tibetan Town
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Narrated by:
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Cassandra Campbell
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By:
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Barbara Demick
A gripping portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people, from the bestselling author of Nothing to Envy
“A brilliantly reported and eye-opening work of narrative nonfiction.”—The New York Times Book Review
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Parul Sehgal, The New York Times • The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • NPR • The Economist • Outside • Foreign Affairs
Just as she did with North Korea, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick explores one of the most hidden corners of the world. She tells the story of a Tibetan town perched 11,000 feet above sea level that is one of the most difficult places in all of China for foreigners to visit.
Ngaba was one of the first places where the Tibetans and the Chinese Communists encountered one another. In the 1930s, Mao Zedong’s Red Army fled into the Tibetan plateau to escape their adversaries in the Chinese Civil War. By the time the soldiers reached Ngaba, they were so hungry that they looted monasteries and ate religious statues made of flour and butter—to Tibetans, it was as if they were eating the Buddha. Their experiences would make Ngaba one of the engines of Tibetan resistance for decades to come, culminating in shocking acts of self-immolation.
Eat the Buddha spans decades of modern Tibetan and Chinese history, as told through the private lives of Demick’s subjects, among them a princess whose family is wiped out during the Cultural Revolution, a young Tibetan nomad who becomes radicalized in the storied monastery of Kirti, an upwardly mobile entrepreneur who falls in love with a Chinese woman, a poet and intellectual who risks everything to voice his resistance, and a Tibetan schoolgirl forced to choose at an early age between her family and the elusive lure of Chinese money. All of them face the same dilemma: Do they resist the Chinese, or do they join them? Do they adhere to Buddhist teachings of compassion and nonviolence, or do they fight?
Illuminating a culture that has long been romanticized by Westerners as deeply spiritual and peaceful, Demick reveals what it is really like to be a Tibetan in the 21st century, trying to preserve one’s culture, faith, and language against the depredations of a seemingly unstoppable, technologically all-seeing superpower. Her depiction is nuanced, unvarnished, and at times shocking.
©2020 Barbara Demick (P)2020 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
“Outstanding . . . a book not only about modern Tibet but one that helps explain the current, poisonous moment in China.”—Financial Times
“[Demick’s] method is programmatic openness, deep listening, a willingness to be waylaid; the effect, a prismatic picture of history as experienced and understood by individuals in their full amplitude and idiosyncrasy.”—Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
“This remarkable book offers a unique insight into Tibet's plight, allowing the reader to understand what it is like for its people to be tossed about in a political storm they neither want nor understand.”—Daily Mail
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Interesting but sad histiry of Tibet rinse 1920s
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Very good story
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Astounding
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Loved it
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Spectacularly depressing look into hidden history
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Excellent writing, moving and powerful stories
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Fascinating
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Interesting History
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Interesting and heartbreaking book
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The last chapters of Demick’s book acknowledge her extensive research. She notes Tibetans are better off now than they were during the Mao years. However, she explains Tibetans do not have the same economic opportunity as the ethnic Chinese. It is important to be Chinese and even more important to be a member of the Communist party.
Demick draws an interesting picture of Tibet. It reveals both the truth and weakness of one historian’s view of China and Tibet. It is founded on the truth of what a number of Tibetans remember of the Mao’ years and the current relationship of China and Tibet. As is true of all books of history, China’s and Tibet’s past is not perfectly clear and the future, at best, becomes a cloudy past.
TIBET
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