The acclaimed journalist Barbara Demick's new book is an illuminating account of modern Tibet. Today, we catch up with the townspeople of Ngaba, and their new lives in India where the Dalai Lama resides. Laurel Lefkow is the reader.

Eat the Buddha tells 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