Dharamsala, October 17 – The gagged voices of the Tibetan writers inside Tibet have found an outlet in form of a book to be launched tomorrow by the International Campaign for Tibet at the Frankfurt International Book Fair, the world’s largest literary event that started on October 14 and ends tomorrow.
Titled Like Gold that Fears No Fire: New Writing from Tibet, the collection includes extracts from books that have been banned by the Chinese government and works by Tibetans currently under imprisonment.
The Washington D.C based organization says the new book “features stories of imprisonment, interrogation, death and loss, as well as perspectives on a better future that reveal an unquenchable spirit and deeply-felt Tibetan identity.”
Most of the Tibetan writers featured in the book are still in China and Tibet, and dare to challenge the Chinese government’s propaganda to denounce the Dalai Lama and cover up the protests in Tibet last year. “The Chinese government has sought to cover up the disappearances and killings that have taken place across Tibet combined with a propaganda offensive against the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama,” the ICT said in a statement.
The book opens with an original article by one of the most popular and daring Tibetan writers, Tsering Woeser. She (Woeser) argues that the events of 2008 are as significant in contemporary Tibetan history as those of March 1959, when tensions against the Chinese presence in Tibet escalated into an uprising, and led to His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s escape into exile.
The book launch will take place at a literary salon organized by ICT in the presence of actor and activist Hannes Jaenicke who is also a Tibetan literature scholar. The book can be downloaded in portable document format (PDF) from the organization’s website.
