Fire Under The Snow: Testimony of a Tibetan Prisoner

(Paperback)

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This is the autobiography of The Venerable Palden Gyatso, arrested in 1959 after taking part in a non-violent demonstration for Tibetan freedom and sentenced to the first long years of his imprisonment. He made one attempt to escape but was recaptured within a mile of the border and then starved, tortured with electric shock batons and subjected to countless "struggle sessions" during the Cultural Revolution. In 1992, after 33 years imprisonment, Gyatso was released. He fled across the Himalayas to India, smuggling the instruments of his torture with him, and began to reveal the true extent of the Chinese oppression in Tibet.

Reviews

"In writing this enduring memoir of extraordinary suffering, resistance and endurance, he has testified not only to the pain of countless individuals but to the devastation of a nation" -- Judith Shapiro New York Times "Every household in Britain should have a copy of Fire Under the Snow" -- Patrick French Sunday Times "This is a book with glory and filth, innocence and murder, wisdom and madness, and at this moment the filth, murder and madness are taking over" -- Bernard Levin The Times

Author Bio

Palden Gyatso was born in 1933 and raised in a small Tibetan village. At the age of eighteen he became an ordained Buddhist Monk at one of Tibet's most famous monasteries, Drepung Monastery. Palden was arrested in 1959 after taking part in a non-violent demonstration for Tibetan independence. After a failed escape bid he was starved and tortured. Following his release in 1992, after 33 years of captivity, he fled to India and began to reveal the true extent of the Chinese oppression in Tibet. The Venerable Palden Gyatso now lives in Dharamsala in India. Since his escape from Chinese-occupied Tibet in 1992, he has travelled widely in Europe and the USA with Amnesty and other support organisations. In 1995 he testified at the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. Palden's autobiography, Fire Under the Snow: True Story of a Tibetan Monk, was published in 1997.