![]() ![]() ![]() While building roads in the service of socialism, one of the 404th monks beats the vultures to the discovery of a headless corpse, whose clothing denotes an affluence that cannot be ignored. It is they who ' made it possible for him to leave behind the pain of his past, to stop looking back.' He suffered torture and ' reeducation', but has found new friends in the Buddhist monks who are fellow laborers in the ' People's 404th Construction Brigade'. Shan, ' the last honest man in Beijing', did too good a job of investigating corruption in the capital and offended a prominent official. Instead, he incarcerated Shan Tao Yun, a veteran Chinese police inspector, with the prison population of Lhadrung Valley in Southern Tibet. Who hasn't heard of the plight of the Tibetan people after the brutal Chinese takeover with its erasure of ancient monasteries, genocidal treatment of monks and nuns, and forced labor camps?īut the author has not taken the obvious approach of using a local hero. Pattison has written a remarkable first novel, which places an indomitable protagonist in the disturbing political setting of contemporary Tibet. I don't believe everything I read on a book's cover, but when the blurb on The Skull Mantra compares this thriller to greats like Gorky Park and Smilla's Sense of Snow, it's dead on. ![]()
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