Moving tale of a Tibetan nun

By Ani Pachen and Adelaide Donnelly.

(Published by Bantam, price £6.99).

Ani Pachen was a happy child, who was brought up in the traditional Tibetan way. Her father was a powerful chieftain and as such brought a certain cachet to the family.

However, being all-powerful was not the Tibetan way. They ruled by council and conciliation.

Days were spent with her mother, learning traditional skills, but Ani had dreams beyond marriage and motherhood. Her greatest desire was to be a Buddhist nun.

Her worst fear was to be the bride in an arranged marriage. Her fate would turn out to be worse than a marriage could ever be.

Her father died and then the Chinese invaded her beloved Tibet. The old ways influenced by the Buddhists would be gone from Tibet for ever.

As the Chinese invasion crept ever further into the hinterlands of Tibet Ani was forced into a role she would never have imagined for herself. A freedom fighter, leading her village into the fight against the aggressors, she was to be their inspiration until she was captured in 1960.

As a prisoner for 21 years she suffered humiliation and torture.

When she was finally released she went back to her village to find it in ruins, and so left her beloved Tibet to live in India. She met the Dalai Lama, and, finally, realised her dream of a monastic life.

This is a remarkable story of a different kind of struggle, a harrowing ordeal; not only to preserve a way of life unimagined in the West, but, to maintain spiritual awareness in an increasingly cruel and materialistic world.

A truly moving book.

Annie Dendy