STEPHEN DAVENPORT
The Independent Weekly (Australia)
October 24, 2008

A Year in Tibet is a tender, elaborately-detailed account of life in
a land of emptiness and majesty. Sun Shuyun spent 12 months in
Gyantse, Tibet's third-largest town, directing a documentary series
about the life of ordinary Tibetans. For a year she followed a
doctor, a rickshaw driver, a hotel manager, a party official, a
builder, two monks and a household where three brothers had shared a
wife for 20 years.

She discovered a people constrained by custom and ritual, but
confronted by hurried, pressurised change and a richly complex
society so different from any other. The book goes beyond the TV
program and explores the people's thoughts and feelings, their
beliefs and their longing for the past. Shuyun languidly takes time
to allow the characters' spiritual beauty and simplicity to shine for
themselves.

Most of the text follows the intimate aspects of dramas surrounding
the shaman, Tseten and his two brothers, their shared wife and their
children. Eloquent, engaging and enlightening, A Year in Tibet is a
particularly spiritual account of time spent in an extraordinary,
spectacular and unique land. HarperCollins, RRP $29.99