The Search for the Panchen Lama - Softcover

Isabel Hilton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140246703 ISBN 13: 9780140246704

Publisher: penguin books, 2000

Synopsis

"An excellent primer on Tibetan history and ....a chilling picture of the brutality of Chinese repression in Tibet."―Wall Street Journal

In May 1995, a seven-year-old Tibetan boy and his family were taken from their home by Chinese security forces. They have not been seen since. The boy's devotees believe him to be the eleventh incarnation of the Panchen Lama, the second most important incarnation in the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy.  Isabel Hilton tells the gripping inside story of how this child became the pawn in a battle between the Chinese regime and Tibet's exiled religious leader, the Dalai Lama. In revealing the political intrigue that accompanied the race to choose and enthrone the eleventh Panchen Lama, Hilton "clarifies a great deal about the nature of Tibetan culture and history and the complexities of Tibet's relationship with China" (New York Times). "Lively and vastly entertaining.... Hilton has seen―and participated in―one of the final moments of a lost Tibet."―Boston Sunday Globe "Riveting ....captures the panoramic scope of a remarkable story.... The ending is heartbreaking."―Los Angeles Times "[A]n outstanding book, well-researched, lively, scholarly, humorous, sympathetic, and eminently readable."―The Tablet "[A]n important book, a work of impeccable scholarship, erudition and great personal courage."―Literary Review "[A] crash course in Tibetan history and affairs in addition to a rattling good story."―The Spectator "Hilton's excellent new book is a cool and intelligent explanation of the political intricacies surrounding the Panchen Lama."―The Observer 21 black and whtie photographs

About this title

About the Author:

Isabel Hilton is an international print and broadcast journalist and a well-known commentator on Chinese affairs. She lives in London.

From Publishers Weekly:

While working on a documentary film, British journalist Hilton was permitted to accompany the Dalai Lama as he sought to identify the 11th incarnation of the Panchen Lama, the second-highest spiritual authority of Tibet's ruling Buddhist sect. This excellent and artfully written book (part of which has appeared in the New Yorker) tells the complicated recent history of the Panchen Lama. The 10th incarnation died under mysterious circumstances in 1989 and is considered by many Tibetans to have been a traitor. The 11th--still a child--is missing; the six-year-old boy was detained along with his family in the mid-'90s by Tibet's Chinese rulers and has not been heard from since. Meanwhile, the Chinese authorities have offered another child as the spiritual leader incarnate. Although she reveals the end of the story in the early pages of the book, Hilton relates this history with great drama and subtle wryness (for Westerners, she says, Tibet is "a kind of religious Disneyland"). Her wonderfully detailed writing illustrates the spiritual and political contours of these events. She describes, for example, a group of Tibetan lamas' two-day journey to Lhamo Latso Lake, where they went to gain insight that helped them find the reincarnated Panchen Lama; their trek, which involved 20 yaks, a video camera and a set of binoculars, was also monitored closely by Chinese spies. Hilton reports the story of the quest with great skill, weaving the history of Tibet with visits to monasteries in Tibet, China and India and conveying the power of a religion to survive the destruction of its institutions, the imposition of martial law, jailings and death in labor camps and prisons.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: penguin books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0140246703
• ISBN 13: 9780140246704
• Binding: Paperback