Why read Bhutan to Blacktown?

Book cover of Bhutan to Blacktown: Losing everything and finding Australia

Book description

I lost my possessions, my salary, my status, my career, my country. And in that fall, I gained everything.

Bhutan is known as the land of Gross National Happiness, a Buddhist Shangri-La hidden in the Himalayas. But in the late 1980s, Bhutan waged a brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign against its citizens…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Bhutan to Blacktown as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Jessica Mudditt

Author

There are precious few books on Bhutan, which adds to its allure in my eyes. I loved reading about the author’s childhood in a village near India, where he didn’t see a car until he was eight.

Om Dhungel’s smarts took him further from home, including to nearby Bangladesh. He rose to become a senior member of the government's telecoms service — when phones were so scarce that phone numbers were only four digits long and even the king of Bhutan needed help making a call sometimes!

But in the 1980s, Bhutan began an ethnic-cleansing campaign against citizens of…

From Jessica's 3 favorite reads in 2023.