Author's note -- Maps -- Part One. 1958-1976 -- Chapter 1. The last princess -- Chapter 2. Eat the Buddha -- Chapter 3. Return of the dragon -- Chapter 4. The year that time collapsed -- Chapter 5. A thoroughly Chinese girl -- Chapter 6. Red city -- Chapter 7. Exile -- Part Two. Interregnum, 1976-1989 -- Chapter 8. The black cat and the golden worm -- Chapter 9. A Tibetan education -- Chapter 10. A peacock from the West -- Part Three. 1990-2013 -- Chapter 11. Wild Baby Yak -- Chapter 12. A monk's life -- Chapter 13. Compassion -- Chapter 14. The party animal -- Chapter 15. The uprising -- Chapter 16. The eye of the ghost -- Chapter 17. Celebrate or else -- Chapter 18. No way out -- Chapter 19. Boy on fire -- Chapter 20. Sorrows -- Chapter 21. The zip line -- Part Four. 2014 to the Present -- Chapter 22. India -- Chapter 23. Everything but my freedom -- Notes -- Glossary -- Acknowledgments -- Illustration credits -- Index

"Set in Aba, a town perched at 12,000 feet on the Tibetan plateau in the far western reaches of China that has been the engine of Tibetan resistance for decades, 'Eat the Buddha' tells the story of a nation through the lives of ordinary people living in the throes of this conflict. Award-winning journalist Barbara Demick illuminates a part of China and the aggressions of this superpower that have been largely off limits to Westerners who have long romanticized Tibetans as a deeply spiritual, peaceful people. She tells a sweeping story that spans decades through the lives of her subjects, among them a princess whose family lost everything in the Cultural Revolution ; a young student from a nomadic family who becomes radicalized in the storied monastery of Kirta ; an upwardly mobile shopkeeper who falls in love with a Chinese woman ; a poet and intellectual who risks everything to voice his resistance. Demick paints a broad canvas through an intimate view of these lives, depicting the tradition of resistance that results in the shocking acts of self-immolation, the vibrant, enduring power of Tibetan Buddhism, and the clash of modernity with ancient ways of life. Her depiction is nuanced, unvarnished, and at times shocking."--