It is a sad tale, this one of Tibet's demise, but it almost seems that this Tibetan author thinks that much was lost.moreĭespite my memories of traveling through Tibet and my affinity for the Tibetan people*, I could not finish this book about a feudal warlord prince growing up in 1930s Tibet. He is the only, fleshed-out character the rest are surface portraits, even when they behave in contradictory ways.

Son of one of the local lords, he is less interested in making war than in creating markets, less interested in starving his enemies than in earning their gratitude by feeding them. The narrator describes himself as an idiot, and other characters debate whether he is or not, but idiocy in this case seems to arise from thinking unconventionally. At least until China intervenes, first in its Republican era by introducing machine guns and opium poppies, then by overrunning the place in the form of the People's Army. The petty despots who run this land, still feudal in the twentieth century, own slaves and give them away, employ executioners and have maids whose bodies are theirs for the asking. There are no mandalas, and what lamas appear are barely disguised shamans. The na This is a novel of Tibet, but not the idealized Western version.

This is a novel of Tibet, but not the idealized Western version. 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.more 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. 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 agr 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. 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.

Strange story tibet mystifies