Red Poppies

A Novel of Tibet

By Alai

1998

First Published

3.65

Average Rating

448

Number of Pages

13H40M

Audio Length

A lively and cinematic twentieth-century epic, Red Poppies focuses on the extravagant and brutal reign of a clan of Tibetan warlords during the rise of Chinese Communism. The story is wryly narrated by the chieftain's son, a self-professed "idiot" who reveals the bloody feuds, seductions, secrets, and scheming behind his family's struggles for power. When the chieftain agrees to grow opium poppies with seeds supplied by the Chinese Nationalists in exchange for modern weapons, he draws Tibet into the opium trade—and unwittingly plants the seeds for a downfall. Red Poppies is at once a political parable and a moving elegy to the lost kingdom of Tibet in all its cruelty, beauty, and romance.

Avg Rating

3.65

Number of Ratings

590

5 STARS

22%

4 STARS

40%

3 STARS

26%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Alai

Author · 3 books

Alai (Chinese: 阿来; pinyin: Ālái; Tibetan: ཨ་ལེ་, Wylie: a-le, ZYPY: Alê, Lhasa dialect IPA: [ɑ́lè]; born 1959 in Sichuan province) is a Chinese poet and novelist of Rgyalrong Tibetan descendent. He was also editor of Science Fiction World. Alai's notable novel Red Poppies (The Dust Settles - Chen'ai Luoding), published in 1998, follows a family of Tibetan chieftains, the Maichi, during the decade or so before the liberation of Tibet by the People's Liberation Army in 1951. Their feudal life in the Tibetan borderlands, narrated by the youngest "idiot" son, is described as cruel, romantic, and full of intrigue (with the incorporation of Tibet into the People's Republic of China presented as a great advance for the Tibetan peasantry). Red Poppies was selected as a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize in 2002 and won the 5th Mao Dun Literary Prize in 2005. (from Wikipedia)