Tibetan Suitcase

by Tsering Namgyal Khortsa

English 288 pages 1 edition

Dawa Tashi is an India-born Tibetan. His parents fled Tibet when the Chinese invaded, and Dawa has grown up in the quiet, verdant Indian Himalayas. When Dawa applies to a well-known university in America to pursue a course in creative writing, his hitherto ordinary life changes dramatically. At the university he befriends, and falls in love with, Iris Pennington, an unusual American student who is studying Buddhist literature. He also comes in contact with Khenchen Sangpo, a renowned scholar of Buddhism and a reincarnated Rinpoche himself. Circumstances lead Dawa back to India too soon, but the connections he makes take his life into many new directions. With his Tibetan suitcase always by his side, he now undertakes many journeys. Some, with Iris and Khenchen, take him deeper into the mystical and mysterious world of Buddhist scholarship. Other journeys take him back to his roots, making him question his life’s directions. Told in the form of letters and journal entries, Tibetan Suitcase is a deeply moving novel about love and longing; about those who belong nowhere; about an existence without a motherland and negotiating in-between worlds. ‘Tsering Namgyal explores and explains the psychology of exile-born Tibetans and with great empathy articulates their frustrations, anger and hopes for themselves and for Tibet.’—Thubten Samphel, author of Copper Mountain ‘In this exquisitely crafted novel, Tsering Namgyal offers us a shapeshifting meditation on love, loss, hope and the power of karma.’—Palash Krishna Mehrotra, author The Butterfly Generation and Eunuch Park ‘A memorable and evocative literary exposition on the lives of exile-born Tibetans.’—Jamyang Norbu, author of The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes