Review: Red Poppies: A Novel of Tibet

I've been interested in Tibet for a while, so I grabbed Red Poppies, which discusses the period before the Tibetan incorporation into China. 

Ultimately, this book disappointed and frustrated me a little bit - I felt there were so many missed opportunities! It was overall lacking in detail and needed to be fleshed out and expanded on in many ways. I am not sure how much is due to losses in translation, but at almost every turn I felt like the plot and setting could have been so much more developed. 

For example, the Goodreads description for the book says "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." This is true, to some extent. It does discuss the planting of the poppies and some of the negative effects that followed, but I wanted to know so much more. Did it lead to any problems with abuse or addiction in Tibet, as it did in China itself? Did the Tibetans understand exactly what it was they were growing? Exactly how manipulative was the relationship involved in bringing the poppies to Tibet? This could have been so interesting with just a little more detail, but it basically left me looking to see if there was another book I could read that would delve into this a little more. Ditto for the political situation.... I really would have liked the book to develop a better understanding of what was going on in Tibet at this time, the existing relationship with China, and why China ended up taking over Tibet. This is largely glossed over and/or left for the reader to sort of infer. 

Part of the issue, I think, was the narrator. He self identifies - and is identified by everyone else - as an "idiot," yet he has strange insights that lead the people around him (and the reader) to wonder if he really is an idiot. However, this "idiot" guise of the narrator also hampers the ability of that narrator to understand - and therefore explain to us - what is going on around him in any depth, and I think that really contributes to the shallowness of the overall discussion of the political situation. This may not bother other readers as much as it bothered me, as that is why I read historical fiction, and why I wanted to read a book about Tibet in particular. For similar reasons, I felt most of the characters were shallow and underdeveloped, probably in part because the narrator doesn't really understand the motivations of other people. 

However, it did reinforce the fact that Tibet is pretty interesting and worth reading about, and gave me some ideas for particular things about Tibet that I want to learn more about, particularly the role of the opium trade and the growth of trade between Tibet and China, and at times it was an interesting story. It's also a quick read, so it isn't a huge investment to get through. 

I think the book also has the virtue of being written by someone (an ethnic Tibetan, according to Amazon) who has a different perspective on events than an outsider might, so that is a strong mark in favor of giving it a read.