In the Presence of My Enemies: Memoirs of Tibetan Nobleman Tsipon Shuguba

by Sumner Carnahan, Lama Kunga Rinpoche

The Tibetan catastrophe - the brutal ongoing campaign to stamp out every trace of Tibetan identity, culture, and civilization - continues unchecked after more than 35 years. His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet "This is an important book. The story must be told." In 1991, at their first meeting in thirty years, the Dalai Lama urged his former finance minister to complete his story about Tibet as it was and about what happened there after his own escape in 1959. "Do not exaggerate," he said. "Just speak the truth." Simply and without bitterness, Shuguba tells his he speaks of the Chinese invasion and Tibetan military resistance against overwhelming odds; the bombings, executions, and massacres; the deaths of his wife and daughter; and his own "trial" and nineteen-year imprisonment. The last surviving high official from the 14th Dalai Lama's original government in Tibet, Tsipon Shuguba reveals information that was concealed from the outside world for over three decades. His recollections of his earlier life offer intimate views of a unique traditional society that is now all but extinct. After his release in 1980, Shuguba spent his last years in the United States, where he died in 1991 at the age of eighty-seven. This moving personal account is based on Shuguba's autobiography supplemented by many hours of interviews conducted by writer Sumner Carnahan and translated by Lama Kunga Rinpoche, a Tibetan high lama who is one of Shuguba's sons. The book includes rare photos of Shuguba's family and associates as well as views of monasteries and other Tibetan cultural treasures that have since been destroyed.

238 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1995

About the author

Carnahan has 12 books in print, including the award-winning audiowork/book, THE TIME IS NOW, and her latest story collection from Teksteditions, YOU ARE NOT ASLEEP. Published in anthologies, CDs, DVDs, broadcast internationally in collaboration with composers and performers, acknowledgements include the NEA, an ABC Radio Fellowship (Australia), IPPY book awards, and a 2010 Eric Hoffer Legacy Fiction Award, for ONE INCH EQUALS TWENTY-FIVE MILES. A new story was published in the Teksteditions anthology, WHAT IS THE SOUND OF SMOKE, 2014.

- “There have been few precedents to this kind of sustained avant-garde literature with a moving human content.” — The Oakland Tribune
- “The most musical prose since Gertrude Stein.” —The Village Voice
- “No other writer since e. e. cummings has inspired such a wealth of innovative music.” — Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes

Reviews

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a stunning read. An intricate look at the fall of Tibet from the inside, the author was a finanace minister of Tibet before China invaded the country. Hand picked for his post by the Dalai Lama, he was a nobleman in traditional Tibetan culture, which he describes quite colorfully. When China seeded spies to infiltrate and ovethrow Tibet, the author was tasked to lead an army of monks (who took up arms) to resist. The story delves into Tibetan culture, from daily life and relationships to spiritual leadership entwined with secular leadership of a nation. After the Dalai Lama fled Tibet (1959), the author was captured by the Chinese and spent 19 years in prison before being released and brought to the US by his son, who translated his father's story from Tibetan. The foreword of the book explains that this telling, from a Tibetan leader is meant to show the history against the more prevalent telling which includes plentiful Chinese propaganda, twisting the truths of the downfall and assimilation of Tibetan culture into China.
The Epilogue and Postcript are poignant if not a call to action.