Tibet Is My Country

The moving biography of Thubten Jigme Norbu, an elder brother of the fourteenth Dalai Lama. Thubten Norbu recalls the details of his life: his childhood, his recognition as a reincarnated lama, the story of his brother, and the exile of thousands of Tibetans from their homeland. Thubten Norbu told his story (it was actually taped) to Heinrich Harrer who spent Seven Years in Tibet (Harrer's account appeared in 1954) and was the tutor to the Dalai Lama.

The autobiography of Thubten Jigme Norbu, brother of the Dalai Lama.

Portrays Tibetan customs and manners, concluding with a picture of Communist infiltrations and domination of the land.

One of the world's spiritual leaders and a renowned wilderness photographer combine their vision of Tibet in this stunningly beautiful book. Essays by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama appear with Galen Rowell's dramatic images in a moving presentation of the splendors of Tibet's revered but threatened heritage. When Chinese communist troops invaded Tibet in 1950, the author was fifteen years old and the spiritual and temporal ruler of a nation the size of western Europe. Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet, appealed to the United Nations for help and then fled across the Himalaya in winter to a border town, where he anxiously awaited political aid that never came. Like the mythical kingdom of Shangri-La, Tibet had sought isolation from the rest of the world. Diplomatic relations and foreign visitors had been shunned, and few people in the West knew what cultural and natural treasures lay threatened there. In the years that followed, the Dalai Lama struggled to maintain peace in Tibet and to protect his people's ways, but in 1959 he was forced to flee to India, where he remains today. There he has established a government in exile in Dharamsala that has endeavored to preserve Tibetan culture while preparing for a peaceful return to a free Tibet. As the Chinese cautiously opened select Tibetan doors to visitors in the 1980s, a sickening realization stole over the rest of the world: Tibet had been ravaged by the Chinese occupation. All but a dozen of Tibet's six thousand monasteries had been destroyed. Much of the once-bountiful wildlife had disappeared. A sixth of the population had perished. The picture seemed so bleak that many wondered whether there was anything worth saving in this wounded land. The Dalai Lama's heartening answer and Galen Rowell's magnificent photographs leave no doubt that the mystery and enchantment of Tibet, though seriously endangered, are still alive. To Tibetans the Dalai Lama is an incarnation of the Buddha of compassion. He has spent the last thirty years tirelessly advocating nonviolence and compassion to all living things as the answer to Tibet's plight. "My religion is simple," he says, "my religion is kindness." My Tibet movingly elaborates this message: here the Dalai Lama offers his views on how world peace, happiness, and environmental responsibility are inextricably linked. He explains the meaning of pilgrimage for Tibetan Buddhists and gives an engaging account of his early life in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. In addition, he reveals many sides to his nature--compassion, profound faith, common sense, generosity, a playful sense of humor--in personal reflections matched here to 108 photographs of the land he hasn't seen since 1959. Together the breathtaking photographs, which express Rowell's own commitment to the natural world, and the Dalai Lama's observations help preserve the enduring meaning of Tibet's culture, religion, and natural heritage.

In this vivid memoir that has sold millions of copies worldwide, Heinrich Harrer recounts his adventures as one of the first Europeans ever to enter Tibet. Harrer was traveling in India when the Second World War erupted. He was subsequently seized and imprisoned by British authorities. After several attempts, he escaped and crossed the rugged, frozen Himalayas, surviving by duping government officials and depending on the generosity of villagers for food and shelter.Harrer finally reached his ultimate destination-the Forbidden City of Lhasa-without money, or permission to be in Tibet. But Tibetan hospitality and his own curious appearance worked in Harrer's favor, allowing him unprecedented acceptance among the upper classes. His intelligence and European ways also intrigued the young Dalai Lama, and Harrer soon became His Holiness's tutor and trusted confidant. When the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1950, Harrer and the Dalai Lama fled the country together.This timeless story illuminates Eastern culture, as well as the childhood of His Holiness and the current plight of Tibetans. It is a must-read for lovers of travel, adventure, history, and culture. A motion picture, under the direction of Jean-Jacques Annaud, will feature Brad Pitt in the lead role of Heinrich Harrer.

In 1982, while he was still a schoolboy, Patrick French met the Dalai Lama for the first time. Ever since, he has been fascinated by Tibet's people, its history, and its recent plight. For centuries, Tibet has occupied a unique place in the Western imagination: romantic, mysterious, a remote mountain kingdom of incarnate lamas and nomadic herdsmen, of gold-roofed monasteries and hidden valleys which hold the secret of eternal youth. In recent years, Tibet has acquired an additional resonance as the oppressed vassal of its mighty neighbour China. Its plight has attracted Hollywood stars, and the exiled Dalai Lama has become the global embodiment of spiritual attainment and unflagging commitment to his nation. The effect of these myths has been more to obscure than to reveal the reality of the country, its people and its plight. Tibet, Tibet has its origins in Patrick French's twenty-year involvement in the Tibetan cause. Part memoir, part travel book, part history, it is a quest for the true Tibet. relationship with China. He meets victims and perpetrators of Mao's Cultural Revolution, and young nuns who continue the fight against Communist rule. He stays in the tents of nomads, and hears first-hand accounts of the hopeless battle against overwhelmingly superior Chinese forces which ended, in a single day, a way of life which had endured for thousands of years. On his journey, Patrick French is continually sidetracked by a cascade of information, thoughts and reflections on such subjects as how to blind a cabinet minister using a yak's knucklebones, the correct method of travelling across a desert by night, and the reasons for the Dalai Lama's transformation into 'an unknown dark-brown bird, bigger than a normal raven'. Patrick French has found a new way of writing about a place and its history. He fascinatingly illuminates one of the most persistently troubling of international issues, and confirms his reputation as one of the finest writers at work today.

This captivating autobiography by a Tibetan educator and former political prisoner is full of twists and turns. Born in 1929 in a Tibetan village, Tsering developed a strong dislike of his country's theocratic ruling elite. As a 13-year-old member of the Dalai Lama's personal dance troupe, he was frequently whipped or beaten by teachers for minor infractions. A heterosexual, he escaped by becoming a drombo, or homosexual passive partner and sex-toy, for a well-connected monk. After studying at the University of Washington, he returned to Chinese-occupied Tibet in 1964, convinced that Tibet could become a modernized society based on socialist, egalitarian principles only through cooperation with the Chinese. Denounced as a 'counterrevolutionary' during Mao's Cultural Revolution, he was arrested in 1967 and spent six years in prison or doing forced labor in China. Officially exonerated in 1978, Tsering became a professor of English at Tibet University in Lhasa. He now raises funds to build schools in Tibet's villages, emphasizing Tibetan language and culture.