Book description
As a young girl in China Xinran heard a rumour about a soldier in
Tibet who had been brutally fed to the vultures in a ritual known as a
sky burial: the tale frightened and fascinated her. Several decades
later Xinran met Shu Wan, a Chinese woman who had spent years
searching for her missing husband who had been serving as a doctor in
Tibet; her extraordinary life story would unravel the legend of the
sky burial. For thirty years she was lost in the wild and alien
landscape of Tibet, in the vast and silent plateaus and the
magisterial mountain ranges, living with communities of nomads moving
with the seasons and struggling to survive.
In this haunting book, Xinran recreates Shu Wen's remarkable journey
in an epic story of love, loss, loyalty and survival. Moving, shocking
and, ultimately, uplifting Sky Burial paints a unique portrait
of a woman and a land, both at the mercy of fate and politics.
Born in Beijing in 1958, Xinran was a journalist and radio presenter
in China. In 1997 she moved to London, where she wrote her bestselling
book
The Good Women of China
. Since then she has written a regular column for the
Guardian
, appeared frequently on radio and TV and published
Sky Burial, What
the Chinese Don't Eat
and
Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love,
a novel (
Miss Chopsticks)
, and a groundbreaking work of oral history,
China Witness
. Her charity, The Mothers' Bridge of Love, was founded to help
disadvantaged Chinese children and to build a bridge of understanding
between the West and China.
