Eat the Buddha

Reviews / Votes

Powerful... a deeply textured, densely reported and compelling exploration of Ngaba... Barbara Demick has form.... Demick brilliantly unpicks the connections between the self-immolations and Tibetans' past... The richness of this book lies in its nuance as much as its extraordinary detail * Observer * Barbara Demick is a reporter of impressive tenacity and thoroughness -- Joan Bakewell * The Times * [Barbara Demick] has achieved something remarkable...Demick illuminates [Ngaba] as no other writer has... Seldom is the veil lifted from Tibet - which makes Ms. Demick's chronicles all the more worth reading... Gripping * Economist * An illuminating and important book -- Kapka Kassabova This is not just another book about the injustice Tibetans suffer at the hands of the Chinese government. As she did in Nothing to Envy, Barbara Demick has pieced together from in-depth interviews not only the reality but the soul of a place, weaving together individual stories with all their contradictions and complexity. Neither heroes or martyrs, they are ordinary people desperately trying to adapt or resist to avoid being destroyed by the forces of history -- Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor Channel 4 News Outstanding... Every page packed with insight and gripping detail... a fascinating history of Ngaba... Compelling * Financial Times * Extraordinarily good. A superb storyteller, Demick melds the personal, the historical and the political seamlessly...The people whose stories she tells [...] leap from the pages, full of life * New Internationalist * Lucid and poignant... beautifully written * Literary Review * Demick's skill lies in her careful choice of characters and the way she narrates their stories across many years, revealing personalities, flaws, hopes and dreams and in doing so making a political story deeply personal * Geographical magazine * Barbara Demick's Eat the Buddha gave the endless oppression of the Tibetans by the Chinese a human face with its descriptions of the lives of individuals -- Books of the Year * Spectator * Eat the Buddha confirms Demick as a master of narrative non-fiction. Tracking down hundreds of eye witnesses, she conducts exhaustive interviews to fact-check and corroborate each story, recreating everything from the smell of burning villages to the gleam of yak butter stirred into tea' * TLS * Grippingly told... Exploring an area rarely visited by foreigners, the author paints striking portraits of people living there, with a fine eye for detail and a keen grasp of Tibet's history -- Books of the Year * Economist * An award-winning journalist, famous for her intrepid reporting and her ability to tell larger stories, through the lives of ordinary people, turns her attention to Tibet -- Books of the Year * Financial Times *