Eat the Buddha

Life and Death in a Tibetan Town

By: Barbara Demick

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

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 eleven thousand 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 twenty-first 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.

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

“You simply cannot understand China without reading Barbara Demick on Tibet. Her work is fair-minded, chilling, awe-inspiringly rigorous, and as vivid as cinema.”—Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition

“Barbara Demick has produced an elegiac narrative of a frontier town that is a hotbed of resistance on the Tibetan plateau. With novelistic depth and through characteristically painstaking research, Demick offers a poignant reminder of the enduring power of memory to illuminate untold histories.”—Tsering Shakya, author of The Dragon in the Land of Snows

“Barbara Demick’s new book is essential reading for anyone interested in China and Tibet. The reporting is rich, the writing is beautiful, and the stories will stay with you. I couldn’t put it down.”—John Pomfret, author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom

“Deeply and meticulously researched, Eat the Buddha tells the story of the beautiful area of eastern Tibet . . . Demick is to be given highest honors for her unflinching account, and her readers will be rewarded with a transformative encounter with the real lives of some extraordinary people.”—Robert A. F. Thurman, Jey Tsong Khapa Professor Emeritus, Columbia University

“Demick provides the missing human dimension in coverage of twenty-first-century Tibet, including the legacy of resistance that has engendered tragic protests by self-immolation, and all the anguish and paradoxes of lives heavily surveilled by the Chinese government, yet largely invisible to the greater world.”—Booklist

Very good story

Good cultural insight woven into a fascinating story. Only complaint is the narrator’s Pǔtōnghuà; I couldn’t understand her enunciation.

Astounding

This book documents the plight and experiences of everyday Tibetan people under Chinese rule. Well documented and very engaging

Interesting but sad histiry of Tibet rinse 1920s

Very factual history featuring a few characters and the last King and his family. Depiction of China's takeover and the atrocities endured by the people of Tibet. Some insights into monastery life and the Dalai Lana are also featured. Narrator has pleasing voice.

Loved it

I learned a lot about an area I've been fascinated by my whole life. Demick illuminates the story of Tibet beautifully.

Spectacularly depressing look into hidden history

Compelling contemporary history that is all but "forgotten." This expose on the intentionally hidden and propgandized abuse of Tibet by communist China taught me things never mentioned in history class.