Split between political occupation and exile, scattered across continents, languages, new professions and lifestyles, what common self can Tibetans muster today? With its appetite for and attentiveness to experience, Old Demons New Deities disarms the question. Tenuous belonging is the theme of choice in these stories, explored with warmth and style, worldly wisdom and sly humor. Choosing not to lean on the armature of nationalist cant or religious tradition, they embrace human variety and desire, the animating principle of the imagination. This is what makes the future viable, for the world at large no less than Tibet. |