Book Review Title: Red Poppies : An epic saga of old Tibet Author: Alai Translated from Chinese by Howard Goldblatt & Sylvia Li-chun Lin Publisher: Penguin, 2002 Pages: 416 “Yes, all I wanted was to be a chieftain; I’d never given any serious thought to what I wanted to do. So I tried hard to imagine what I’d get by becoming a chieftain. Silver? Women? Vast territory? Numerous servants? I had all those without even trying. Power? Yes, power. But it wasn’t as if I didn’t have any now. Besides, power could get me only more silver, more women, vaster territory, and more servants. Which was to say, being chieftain didn’t mean much to me. But strangely, I still wanted it.” One of the biggest paradoxes of human life is that a lot of effort is expended on a lot of enterprises which really don’t make our life any better. We endure so many struggles and overcome so many hurdles, pull down apparent rivals and prop up convenient collaborators, s
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