The Red Wind Howls: A Novel

by Tsering Döndrup, Christopher Peacock (translator)

A remarkable novel by one of Tibet’s foremost authors, The Red Wind Howls is a courageous and gripping portrayal of Tibetan suffering under Mao’s regime. The story delves deep into forbidden history, spanning the famine of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and, most taboo of all, the 1958 Amdo rebellion when Tibetans rose in armed revolt against the Chinese state. Tsering Döndrup self-published the book in 2006, because no publisher would risk accepting it. When the authorities caught wind, all copies were confiscated and the author faced severe reprisals. He lost his job as head of the local archives, his passport was confiscated, and he has been under close surveillance ever since.

This powerful novel is largely set in the punitive labor camps to which Tibetans were sent after the failed rebellion, where many perished from starvation or forced labor. Inside and outside the camps, it depicts with dark humor a world of informers, cruelty, and score settling, against the backdrop of immeasurable environmental devastation and the destruction of traditional Tibetan ways of life. The novel draws on extensive interviews conducted by the author, and the rhythms of oral storytelling are reflected in its fragmented narrative style, which jumps back and forth between periods and events. An unparalleled account of the Chinese Communist Party’s takeover of Tibet, The Red Wind Howls is both a richly imaginative work of fiction and a vital piece of historical testimony.

Genres: Fiction, China, Historical Fiction

320 pages, Paperback

Published June 17, 2025

Reviews

[Nicki Markus · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Red Wind Howls was a bit of a mixed bag for me. On the plus side, I think it's wonderful for such a work to be released to gain a wider readership, as it sounds as if the author has faced a lot of trouble over the writing of it. At times, this reminded me of The Good Soldier Švejk in the way it uses moments of silliness and humour on the part of the main character to disclose deeper, darker issues. I was invested in the book for the first half, but by the second half it began to feel a little repetitive and I started to grow weary of the fragmentary style of the narrative, so I did find myself skim-reading a bit as we moved into the final third. Overall, I am giving the book three stars. I think it's an important work that tells of a somewhat hidden part of recent history, but its narrative style is not going to be for everyone.

I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1958, the Chinese Communist Party slaughtered over 120,000 Tibetans in a region called Amdo where an uprising occurred against the Party’s attempt to uproot and eliminate the people’s traditional ways of life and religion as nomads and Buddhists. Another 50,000 citizens of Amdo were sent to labor camps, where the majority died serving their 10-year sentences. Mao’s directed mass-murder in Amdo remains, today, illegal to discuss in mainland China. The fact that so few people from Amdo survived has helped ensure that Tibetans and Chinese alike have forgotten the uprising, assuming they have heard of it at all.

Tsering Döndrup, born in 1961, grew up in Amdo, where the slaughter was fresh in the minds of its citizens, since every family there was affected by it, and they still suffered at the hands of violent government-supported intercessions into daily affairs by vigilante groups set up to enforce Mao’s policies and invent enemies to persecute locally. The events comprising the uprising and its suppression were recorded by Döndrup in interviews he held with survivors as background notes for The Red Wind Howls.

The novel’s protagonist, Alak Drong (which means something like “Minister Yak”), begins the tale with his release from labor camp and his memories of the events leading to his imprisonment, and the Maoist revolutionaries who forced him to denounce his faith as a practicing Buddhist monk. No one is safe from being targeted by self-appointed guardians of the revolutionary light, and everybody eventually succumbs to betraying others—even kin and spouses—if it means another day of life for themselves. On the one hand, everyone is a hypocrite. On the other hand, suicides claim as many as 10 souls a day, apart from those who die of malnutrition, overwork, exhaustion, and beatings.
Outside of the labor camps, mass starvation is rife throughout the region.

For the first few years of Alak Drong’s imprisonment, much of the labor is devoted to deforesting the region. The government assumed that the forests could be transformed into farmland for barley. But barley and other crops do not bear fruit (or grow particularly well) a mile or more above sea level. (The camp where Alak Drong works, in the Tibetan Plateau, is 11,000 feet above sea level.)

During Drong’s sentence—as citizens are arrested, sent to camp, returned home, re-arrested and “struggled against” (i.e., beaten and tortured by their neighbors), and sent to camp again—mutual trust among neighbors is replaced by calculation. While a person might enjoy the opportunity to avenge himself against someone who wronged him in the past, the opportunity for revenge is often only temporary, and fortunes turn again.

Out of the labor camp, back home, Drong’s community under the thumb of the CCP with its rigid, unrealistic agricultural production goals and sense of ideological purity, his situation isn’t much improved, although nutritional levels are marginally better and the work less battering. Mao is dead but the CCP is still in power. And it doesn’t apologize to anyone.

Although Döndrup was already an established, well-regarded author when the novel was published in 2006, he could find no publisher willing to risk publishing. So he published it himself. Using the fact that the self-published version lacked an ISBN, the CCP first banned the book, then upped the ante by revoking his passport (he can no longer leave the country), reducing his salary (forcing him into early retirement), and prohibiting him from accepting further literary awards. He has published additional works since The Read Wind Howls, but the punishments remain in place.

For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first Tibetan book I had read, and I am enormously grateful that it comes accompanied by an excellent informative introduction, as it’s a novel which, whilst not difficult to read, really needs a lot of background information to fully enter into the world it explores. It opens up, particularly for a western readership, a country and its history that isn’t perhaps as well-known as it merits, and I found it a fascinating insight into a different culture. I’m sure the book will become an important addition to world literature. It was originally self-published in Tibetan in 2006, and immediately banned whilst the author suffered severe reprisals. Now published into English for the first time it will surely gain, as it deserves, a wide readership. It tells of the suffering endured over decades by Tibetans under Mao’s regime, examining events such as the 1958 Amdo uprising (here called appropriately the Harrowing Day), the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. It’s divided into two parts. The first deals largely with life in the terrible labour camps for “class enemies” and the descriptions are as harrowing as those we are perhaps more familiar with in descriptions of the Soviet Gulag. The second part takes up the experiences of those who survive the camps to return home, and the lives of those they left behind. It’s a fragmented narrative, jumping about in time and place, and requires careful reading, but that careful reading certainly pays off. Once you become used to the names and places, it’s not a difficult read, and the characterisation is nuanced and never simplistic. There’s no reliance on binaries between the good and the bad as even the bad guys often suffer in their turn. Based on archival research and many interviews, the novel feels authentic and convincing, and although it’s a bleak and tough read, it’s an engaging one and I felt so much better informed by the end. Highly recommended.

[Violet · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up.

I liked that this novel - by an author of Mongolian origin who grew up in Tibet - felt very different from what I normally read. We follow a group of monks in the first part, and a group of villagers mostly, in the second part, as they go through the changes brought in the 1950s by the Chinese Communist Party. It's very graphic in parts - famine, sexual assault, death, torture - but also funny, in the first part especially, as the monks turn against each other, betray their faith and their peers, plot against their oppressors and each other... The second part is a lot darker, not just in theme but in tone, as the monks are living amongst villagers and we follow a young couple - a former monk and his "fake wife" (married so that the Chinese Army will believe he really is reformed), harrassed by his former colleague who has now joined the Communist Party, tortured repeatedly, disturbed by the plight of his neighbours but unable to help them...

It's non-linear - the introduction suggests this may be to evoke the psychological trauma suffered by the Tibetans, as well as the Chinese Youths forced to run the labor camps - which made it difficult to follow at times, especially in the first part as the main character recalls various times in his past. There's some misogyny which didn't feel intentional for the purpose of the book; but overall I found it... interesting to read and I am glad I gave it a try.

Free copy sent by Netgalley.

[Benjamin Counter · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's sometimes hard to get a picture of what happened in Tibet, when information is scarce, heavily censored and surrounded by misinformation. We know it's bad when we hear that the CCP has oppressed Tibetan culture, devastated the environment on the Plateau and killed so many in the attempt to eradicate the Tibetan identity, but what does it actually look like?

It is stories like these that bring to life these cold-natured statements, that weave concepts like double-speak, environmental injustice and human rights violations together into the lived experience of the Tibetans.


Christopher Peacock mentions how Tsering Döndrup purposefully uses the discontinued storytelling in a way that resembles trauma survivors recounting their suffering. I can only attest that piecing this book together did have a familiar feeling, reminiscent of me sitting next to my father and him explaining a small part of his life as a newly-settled refugee.

It is impossible to tell everything, to explain everything that happened. There's an inherent separation between those who lived through and those who hear of, but stories like 'The Red Wind Howls' mean the world to both.

[Oleh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Tibetan perspective on the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Whereas part 1 depicts labour camps and reeducation practices, part 2 takes on a more personal tone, depicting struggles of a politcal outcast, refusing to abdicate his faith.

[Just · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting history, very fragmented style and pretty brutal which made it hard to read.