Alai (Chengdu/China)

Host: Alice Grünfelder, sinologist (Zurich)

Alai’s novel "Red Poppies", which was originally rejected by a number of Chinese publishers because it dealt with Tibet, became a bestseller in 1998 and was awarded the most important Chinese prize for literature, the Mao Dun Prize, in the year 2000.

The author, who was born near Markang (North Sichuan) in 1959, started publishing poems and stories in the journal "Tibetische Literatur" in the early 1980s. Later, Alai moved to Chengu, where he was made chief-editor of "Science Fiction World", China’s biggest science fiction magazine. In 2003, "Red Poppies" appeared in English. All of the characters in this novel know that the protagonist, the second son of Prince Maichai, is an idiot. Although he is heir to the throne, he will never have a chance of becoming the ruler. Consequently, he can observe his surroundings more objectively: the Prince’s castle in the far east of Tibet, the ruthlessness and brutality of feudal rule, the Lamas caught up in petty quarrels, the plotting and scheming over beautiful women, and the feuding with neighbouring rulers, not to mention the changing alliances with the Chinese. Modernity only reaches the remote uplands as a distant echo. After a special envoy of the Chinese government gives the prince permission to cultivate poppies, the latter becomes phenomenally rich. The beguiling red poppy flowers and the scent from the ripening capsules unsettle the country with its archaic lifestyle. Only the “idiot” realises that an era is drawing to a close.

Publications include:

- Two stories in the German collection An den Lederriemen geknotete Seele. Erzähler aus Tibet (A. Grünfelder (ed.), Unionsverlag 1997)

- Red Poppies: A Novel of Tibet (Mariner Books, 2003)