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Eat the Buddha by Barbara Demick

Episode 2

Duration: 14 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 FMLatest broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 FM

The award winning journalist Barbara Demick's new and illuminating book tells the story of modern Tibet. Today, the region's last princess is exiled to a remote part of China during the Cultural Revolution. The reader is Laurel Lefkow.

Eat the Buddha tells modern Tibet's troubled history through the eyes the people of one town, starting in the 1950s when China claimed sovereignty over Tibet, leading to decades of unrest and resistance, and bringing us up to the present day. Barbara Demick's account is an evocative portrait of what life is like for today's Tibetans who struggle to maintain their identity in the face of one of the most powerful countries in the world.

Barbara Demick won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nothing to Envy (Granta, 2010), her seminal book on North Korea. She is also the author of Besieged (Granta, 2012), her account of the war in Sarajevo, which won the George Polk Award, the Robert F Kennedy Award and was shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize. She lives in New York.

Abridged by Penny Leicester.
Produced by Elizabeth Allard Show less

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