Published by Taschen in March 2018, “Murals of Tibet” by Thomas Laird is a SUMO-sized publication presenting the most precious surviving murals of Tibetan Buddhist culture. Contributing authors to the book are Robert A. F. Thurman, Heather Stoddard and Jakob Winkler. The Collector’s Edition comes with a bookstand designed by Shigeru Ban.

Published by Vij Books in August 2017, “Tibet: The Last Months of a Free Nation, India -Tibet Relations 1947-1962, Part 1” by Claude Arpi uses never-accessed-before Indian archival material to examine India-Tibet Relations from 1947 to 1962.

Published by Speaking Tiger in June 2017, “Tibetan Caravans: Journeys from Leh to Lhasa” by Abdul Wahid Radhu is a memoir about trans-Himalayan trade — the riches, the politics and protocol, the challenging yet magnificent natural landscape, altitude sickness, snow storms, bandits and raiders, monks and soldiers.

Published by Oxford University Press India in May 2018, “Darjeeling Reconsidered: Histories, Politics, Environments” edited by Townsend Middleton and Sara Shneiderman rethinks Darjeeling’s status in the postcolonial imagination.

Published by University Press of New England in May 2018, “Blessings from Beijing: Inside China’s Soft-Power War on Tibet” by Greg Bruno untangles the chains that tie Tibetans to China and examines the political, social, and economic pressures that are threatening to destroy Tibet’s refugee communities. 

Published earlier this year by Orient Black Swan in India, “In Diasporic Lands: Tibetan Refugees and their Transformation since the Exodus” by Sudeep Basu studies the dynamics of Tibetan refugees’ emergent culture in the midst of their hosts, and in distinctly urban settings. Based on the author’s ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Darjeeling town, West Bengal, this volume looks at how places and […]

Published in June 2018 by École française d’Extrême-Orient, “The Hybridity of Buddhism: Contemporary Encounters between Tibetan and Chinese Traditions in Taiwan and the Mainland” edited by Fabienne Jagou is a collected volume of articles as a result of a three year project funded by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchanges.

As 2017 nears to a close, we’ve updated our Summer reading list to include 13 more titles covering the span of the entire Tibetan Buddhist world. Please note the reading list is best viewed on your computer’s browser, each link opens in a new tab.

Published in November 2017 by Columbia University Press, “Food of Sinful Demons: Meat, Vegetarianism, and the Limits of Buddhism in Tibet” by Geoffrey Barstow explores the tension between Buddhist ethics and Tibetan cultural norms to offer a novel perspective on the spiritual and social dimensions of meat eating.

Published in July 2017 by Shambhala Publications, “Enlightened Vagabond: The Life and Teachings of Patrul Rinpoche” is a collection of stories gathered and translated by the French Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard over more than thirty years.