Red Poppies
By Alai
Houghton Mifflin, $24
ISBN 0618119647

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An idiot's guide to Tibet

This novel's narrator is an idiot. No, really -- an idiot, like in the clinical sense: illiterate, guileless, prone to staring and drooling. But like Lear's Fool, this idiot is unconventionally wise.

The narrator is also Tibetan, and his story is a swan song of pre-occupation Tibet. The second son of a Chieftain, the idiot is initially only an amusement to his family, which expects his older, "smart" brother to assume power. But while the smart brother fails to extend his father's influence, the idiot succeeds and his reputation swells.

Alas, fortune turns. After driving the Japanese out of China, the Red and White Chinese (aka Communists and Nationalists) now wrestle for control. Their conflict spills into secluded Tibet, only recently acquainted with cameras and syphilis, poppies and machine guns. With the Whites put to rout, the Reds set out to demolish the brutal, hierarchical Tibetan society.

Brutal? Hierarchical? The Tibetans? Aren't the Tibetans cuddly like the Dalai Lama, chummy with Richard Gere, solid Buddhist egalitarians? Not according to Red Poppies -- not by a long shot. They keep slaves (aka "livestock"). They publicly mutilate and execute criminals (severing of hands and tongues is especially popular, also death by poisonous insects). They keep numerous wives and women ("concubines" is too elevated a word). Not that China was necessarily right to drag Tibet bloodily into modernity. But the Chieftains seem much more Taliban than Dalai Lama (or neither, given their indulgence in opium, liquor, song, whores).

The novel's unsparing depiction of old Tibet may partially explain why, despite its initial rejection by many skittish Chinese publishers, it ultimately met with wide critical acclaim and commercial success following its 1998 appearance, and subsequently won China's top literary prize. Its author, an ethnic Tibetan, is an award-winning short story writer, and Red Poppies -- the first work of a projected trilogy -- has been compared to the works of Faulkner and Marquez.

Stylistically, Red Poppies is no match for these masters. The novel's language is not as authentically idiotic as, say, that of Faulkner's Benjy, but its fractured sense of time and logic is convincing, and adds to the feeling of chaos attending Tibet's dissolution.

Red Poppies will no doubt alarm innocent owners of "Free Tibet" bumper stickers, but it will charm readers seeking a fresh fictional voice.

Ken Champeon is a writer who lives in Thailand.