Red Poppies
Alai
Translated by Howard Goldblatt, Syliva Li-chun Lin
A panoramic epic of love and war among the Tibetan chieftains before the Chinese occupationtakeover in 1949
Ambitious, sensuous, filled with intriguing characters, panoramic settings, and high drama, Red Poppies opens a window on a unique region of pre-occupation Tibet, dispelling many of the popular myths about a uniformly pacifist society. Set in the eastern region of the country where warlike autocratic rule, lavish lifestyles, and bloody feuds take centre stage, this historical tale does for Tibet what the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez have done for Columbia and William Faulkner's have done for the American South.
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About Alai Alai was born in a tiny hamlet in Maerkang county, in what is now western Sichuan, at the time of the story, however his hometown was in the western part of the Tibetan Autonomous regions before the Chinese takeover. In the 1980s Alai published a story about a legendary wise man Agu Dunaba, who in the author's words, "represents the Tibetans' aspirations nd oral traditions." But, rather than focus on the sagacity so often extolled by others, he "preferred the wisdom masked by stupidity." A decade later Agu Dunba became the model for the narrator in Red Poppies, feeling that "the intelligence of Agu Dunba epitomizes raw and uncultured folk wisdom."
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