Alai
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Red Poppies: A Novel of Tibet
Alai, Howard Goldblatt, Sylvia Li-chun Lin
Ambitious, beautifully told, filled with intriguing characters, panoramic settings, and high drama, Red Poppies opens a window on a unique region of pre-occupation Tibet, dispelling many of the popular myths about a uniformly pacifistic society peopled by devout worshipers. Set in the eastern part of the country, whose autocratic chieftains received their power to govern from Chinese emperors in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, this novel is about a feudal society in full, hot-house bloom. Lavish, sensual lifestyles, passionate romance, and bloody feuds take center stage in a sweeping historical tale that does for Tibet what the works of Garcia Marquez have done for Colombia and of Faulkner have done for the American South.
Red Poppies is the story of the Maichi family, its powerful chieftain, his Han Chinese wife, his first son and presumptive heir, and his second, “idiot, “ son, the novel’s narrator and unlikely hero. The time is the 1930s, the setting a stone fortress overlooking all the family rules, the arid plains of eastern Tibet, and a thinly scattered populous…
