Stick Out Your Tongue

When Stick Out Your Tongue was published in Chinese in 1997 a blanket ban was placed on Ma Jian''s future work. With its publication in English readers get a rare glimpse of Tibet through Chinese eyes. In this profound work of fiction a Chinese writer whose marriage has fallen apart travels to Tibet. As he wanders through the countryside he witnesses the sky burial of a Tibetan woman who died during childbirth shares a tent with a nomad who is walking to a sacred mountain to seek forgiveness for sleeping with his daughter and hears the story of a young female lama who died during a Buddhist initiation rite. In stories both enchanting and horrifying beautiful and macabre seductive and perverse Stick Out Your Tongue offers a startlingly vivid portrait of Tibet.