2007 books

5) Ma Jian, Stick Out Your Tongue, 1987
Ma Jian is now living in London as a result of these short stories that were immediately banned on publication in China, and serves as a Tibetan counterpart to his award-winning Chinese travelogue Red Dust. This memorable collection is like an examination of Tibet's spiritual malaise in urgent need of diagnosis, hence the title. As a lone Chinese traveller in Tibet Ma was the outsider, but in these brief fictions he also portrays modern Tibetans as outsiders to their own cultural history: they are harsh, raw and dehumanising vignettes of the consequences of poverty in Tibetan life, yet they are narrated with a degree of unflinching calm that often suggests an autobiographical witness that is hard to argue with or question. Excellent.