A YEAR IN TIBET

Sun Shuyun (HarperPress, £20)

Chinese writer Sun Shuyun spent 18 months with a TV camera team in a remote Tibetan village, known for its anti-Chinese stance. But this is far more than an exotic travelogue and recent events make her account compelling reading.

While she is an ethnic Chinese, she has impeccable credentials for producing a balanced account, having won a scholarship to Oxford in the late 1980s, where she studied for a master's under the guidance of Tibetologist Michael Aris, the late husband of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

With a film crew, she lived in a rented house, making friends with the cast of characters who starred in the film. She has included much in the book that did not make it to the small screen.

Educated in China, she is immersed in the official mythology of Tibetan history, but she listens carefully to her subjects, discovering terrible things that happened to them during the Cultural Revolution and more recently.

She will speak at the Oxford Literary Festival tomorrow at 4pm.