THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A TIBETAN MONK, by Palden Gyatso with Tsering Shakya, fore. by the Dalai Lama

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A TIBETAN MONK

by Palden Gyatso with Tsering Shakya, fore. by the Dalai Lama

Palden Gyatso was born in a Tibetan village in 1933 and became an ordained Buddhist monk at eighteen--just as Tibet was in the midst of political upheaval. When Communist China invaded Tibet in 1950, it embarked on a program of "reform" that would eventually affect all of Tibet's citizens and nearly decimate its ancient culture. In 1967, the Chinese destroyed monasteries across Tibet and forced thousands of monks into labor camps and prisons. Gyatso spent the next twenty-five years of his life enduring interrogation and torture simply for the strength of his beliefs. Palden Gyatso's story bears witness to the resilience of the human spirit, and to the strength of Tibet's proud civilization, faced with cultural genocide.

He became a Buddhist monk and won a place as a student at Drepung Monastery where he came to spiritual and intellectual maturity. In 1959, along with thousands of other monks, he was forced into labor camps and prisons where he spent 33 years being tortured, interrogated, and persecuted simply for being a monk. After his release he escaped across the Himalayas to India, smuggling with him the instruments of his torture. Since then, he has devoted himself to revealing the extent of Chinese oppression in Tibet.

"To readers of this memoir, however untraveled, Tibet will never again seem remote or unfamiliar.... Gyatso reminds us that the language of suffering is universal."--Kirkus Reviews

"Has the ring of undeniable truth. . . Palden Gyatso's clear-sighted eloquence...makes his tale even more engrossing."--San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

Since his release in 1992, Palden Gyatso has continued to struggle for freedom for the hundreds of political prisoners still behind bars in Tibet.