Memories of Life in Lhasa Under Chinese Rule

Born in 1941 Tubten Khétsun is a nephew of the Gyatso Tashi Khendrung one of the senior government officials taken prisoner after the Tibetan peoples’ uprising of March 10 1959. Khétsun himself was arrested while defending the Dalai Lama's summer palace and after four years in prisons and labor camps he spent close to two decades inLhasa as a requisitioned laborer and ‘class enemy’.In this eloquent autobiography Khétsun describes what life was like during those troubled years. His account is one of the most dispassionate detailed and readable firsthand descriptions yet published ofTibet under the Communist occupation. Khétsun talks of his prison experiences as well as the state of civil society following his release and he offers keenly observed accounts of well-known events such as the launch of the Cultural Revolution as well as lesser-known aspects of everyday life in occupiedLhasa. Since Communist China continues to occupyTibet the facts of this era remain obscure and few of those who lived through it have recorded their experiences at length. Khétsun’s story will captivate any reader seeking a refreshingly human account of what occurred during the Maoists' shockingly brutal regime.