Eat the Buddha

A gripping portrait of contemporary Tibet, from the bestselling author of Nothing to Envy.

In the 1930s Mao’s Red Army fled to the Tibetan plateau to escape their adversaries in the Chinese Civil War. By the time the soldiers reached remote 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. These experiences would make the town a hotbed of Tibetan resistance for decades to come, culminating in shocking acts of self-immolation in recent years.

Eat the Buddha chronicles the tragic history of modern Tibet through the lives of award-winning journalist Barbara Demick’s subjects. Among them are a princess whose family is wiped out during the Cultural Revolution, a young nomad who becomes radicalised in a monastery, and a schoolgirl forced to choose between her family and the lure of Chinese money.

Illuminating a society long romanticised as deeply spiritual, Demick reveals what it is like to be Tibetan today, trying to preserve one’s culture, faith and language against the depredations of a seemingly unstoppable, all-seeing.