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Sky Burial | 
 enlarge | Author: Xinran
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
Category: Book
List Price: $31.00
Buy Used: $7.97
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Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 3038912
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 5.8 x 0.8
ISBN: 0701176229
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9780701176228
ASIN: 0701176229
Publication Date: July 1, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Good reading copy. May include highlighting/writing, some completed exercises, missing dust cover, crease, and/or overall wear. Ships within 2 business days. 100% Customer satisfaction guaranteed.
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Product Description
In 1994, Xinran met a woman whose story was so extraordinary, it came to obsess her. Of all the Chinese women that Xinran had interviewed for her radio programme (famous in China for its discussion of women's lives), Shu Wen had endured things far beyond the imagination of most people. For over thirty years, she had wandered the empty, silent mountains of north Tibet in search of her husband, a Chinese soldier who was missing in action. She had gone there in the 1950s as a young woman in her prime; she had returned to China grey-haired and utterly changed by her experiences. Shu Wen's life story, brilliantly recreated by Xinran, gives a unique, moving and unforgettable insight into the landscape, religion and nomads of Tibet. At the same time it illuminates the complex and emotional relationship between the Tibetans and Chinese, uncovering the history that lies behind it. But, above all, this is an epic love story - the tale of a woman who adored her husband so much, she gave up everything she knew to travel thousands of miles to one of the most intimidating countries in the world.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 Poor Excuse for a Love Story August 8, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm sorry, to call this an Epic Love Story is ridiculous. Yes Shu Wen loved her husband enough to make an attempt to go find him after she received a questionable letter than he had died, but that is as far as the 'love story" in this tale goes. I found it really hard to like this book and was so bored with it about three quarters of the way through I tossed it and didnt find myself interested enough to finish it. It's not written that well in the sense that I found her story intriquing or her character one to love. In fact, what I want to know is, if she loved her husband so much to travel alone into unknown Tibet from China to find him, why the hell did she lolligag for over 20 years with that family that took her in? She wasnt exactly eagerly pounding the pavement or working hard at locating him. She literally got very comfortable with this family and deliberately instated herself into their lives without looking for him very hard. Over 20 years? Please! The reader learns a little history of what happened to Tibet with the occupation of China and thankfully learns a bit about Tibetan nomad culture. That is about all that is redeeming about this story. I also think that this story can not be SO unusual. I'm sure that at this period in time there must have been MANY Chinese woman who lost their husbands to the war with Tibet and many woman who did the same as she did by leaving her country to search for them. Truly, I dont find anything about Shu Wen or this book so unique. The author also does not really portray Shu Wen's character in a way that you fall in love with her or find her interesting. And again, to say this is a love story, or to say what she did was romantic is really really far fetched. To me, this story reminds me of Krakauer's Into the Wild, it is a pointless story about a person who didnt do much out of the ordinary and at times made themselves look very foolish.
 Epic in many ways July 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Sky Burial is Xinran's telling of Shu Wen's story of the thirty year search for her husband in Tibet. Shu Wen was only married to her husband for 3 weeks when he was called up to serve as a doctor in the People's Liberation Army. After only 100 days of marriage, Shu Wen received notice that her husband had died in Tibet. She was given no details and what she had been told led her to doubt that he was really dead. Shu Wen was herself a doctor and so she joined the army in order to get into Tibet with the hope of finding her husband. This dedicated woman spent 30 years in Tibet before she learned her husband's fate. Sky Burial is truly a love story unlike any I've ever read before. It is made more amazing by its veracity.
The sense of place and people in Sky Burial left a great impression on me. The immense landscape, and the isolation and intense spirituality of the nomadic people with whom Shu Wen lived out her years in Tibet, were a striking part of the story. I was also struck by the timelessness of the vast spaces and hardy people. That lack of time sense was a bit disconcerting to my Western mindset, but perhaps it is more reflective of the place and people than I might comprehend from my own compartmentalized life. Counting days on a calendar, or even counting seasons, would seem irrelevant in a life that needs to be lived in the present. Sky Burial provides no markers to let the reader know just how long Shu Wen was in Tibet but for her own statement that she had been in that country for 30 years.
The isolation of the Tibetan people and the vast spaces in which they lived would seem a hindrance for finding someone and gaining information, but this was not so. I was astonished that Shu Wen was able to learn her husband's fate and receive his last words in such an environment. Contrast that with her return to modern China to her family neighborhood. No one was able to provide Shu Wen with any information as to the location or fate of her parents and sister. The neighborhood itself had been razed and rebuilt 3 times in a decade and the residents had no history with the place nor the people.
Overall I found this a fascinating look into the life of a very dedicated woman and into a culture with which I have little familiarity.
If you are interested in world music, I would suggest "Sister Drum" by Dadawa as a companion to your reading of Sky Burial.
 A Love Story for the Reader, As Well June 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Sky Burial is based on a true story as it was told to the author, Xinran, by the principal character, Shu Wen. Wen's young idealist husband is an Army doctor in 1950's China, sent to Tibet during the time of China's "liberation" of Tibet. They had only been married three weeks when he left, and around 100 days after his departure she received a letter stating he was dead. The lack of explanation of death gave her a hope that perhaps he really wasn't dead, just lost, and she joined the Army as well, in her husband's unit. Herself a dermatologist, they were only too glad to of her request to be sent to Tibet--doctors were much needed on the front. Shortly after reaching Tibet, however, Wen is separated from her unit and spends the next thirty years wandering with a family of nomadic Tibetans, never giving up hope that she will find the answer to her husband's disappearance.
The writing is sparse and without a lot of descriptions, and whether it is intentional or because Xinran is in fact a journalist and not a novelist, it works wonderfully for both the untamed Tibetan landscape and the slowly unfolding, sometimes bleak but always beautiful, story.
The reader follows Wen, amazed at her tenacity as the years go by, at her unwillingness to give up against such odds. As she becomes more and more comfortable in her Tibetan ways, the reader sees Wen falling in love, unknowingly, with Tibet--and does the same, openly embracing this wild country. Like Wen, the reader can not give up hope, knowing there will be an answer to Wen's search, because such determination and love does not go unrewarded.
Subtitled "an epic love story of Tibet", Sky Burial is just that--a love story of a woman for a country as well as her husband; a love story of the reader for Tibet, for Wen, and for Xinran for giving such a gift.
Sky Burial September 2, 2007
Amazing story - I didn't want it to end as you can't beleive the committment shown.
I was skeptical June 11, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
A friend of mine whom I lovingly refer to as the Uberlibrarian once recommended a book to me that I thought was a total stinker. So when she began to rave about Sky Burial, I was skeptical. After all, the last book she was very enthusiastic about was The Smoke Jumper--which was the aforementioned stinker. Could she be trusted again?
Oh, yes. This is a very slender volume of a woman's search for her husband who was reported dead by the Chinese government shortly after their marriage. As they were both doctors, the woman left her home and volunteered her service to the Chinese army, traveling to Tibet in search of her love, hoping he was not dead. Abandoning the army (in a hopeless situation of invasion and occupation), she was adopted by a Tibetean family, changed her way of life and along the way found the truth about his remarkable fate, so much more than the Chinese government had even known. Her journey--which took nearly three decades--is not to be missed. It is a great story written by a female journalist who met this amazing woman and took her story down over the course of two days.
Might I add: this is a fantastic book if you are traveling. It is slender and can be read in full on a cross-country flight. You will be so engrossed you probably won't notice when they ask you for coffee or tea or peanuts or whatever.
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