Why read Lhasa?

Book cover of Lhasa: Streets with Memories

Book description

There are many Lhasas. One is a grid of uniform boulevards lined with plush hotels, all-night bars, and blue-glass-fronted offices. Another is a warren of alleyways that surround a seventh-century temple built to pin down a supine demoness. A web of Stalinist, rectangular blocks houses the new nomenklatura. Crumbling mansions,…

Explore

Topics

Genres

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

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

Benno Weiner

Author

This is Robert Barnett’s beautifully written, highly imaginative rumination on the city that for centuries has served as the spiritual, political, and historical center of the Tibetan-Buddhist world. Lhasa, however, has also been an object—sometimes obsession—of generations of outsiders seeking adventure, trade, or enlightenment.

In recent years, Lhasa has been transformed into a Chinese provincial capital, replete with wide avenues, hair salons of questionable reputation, and the white-tiled, blue-tinted-windowed buildings that have become ubiquitous across China’s ‘second and third-tier’ cities.

Barnett, a journalist-turned-scholar of modern Tibet, both juxtaposes and layers all of these Lhasas—along with his own memories of a…

From Benno's list on The best books to understand the plight of Tibetans in contemporary China.