Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet

#139
Title: Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet
Author: Xinran
Publisher: Vintage (different cover from above)
Year: 2005
Genre: Asia, memoir (perhaps)
172 pages

Billed as nonfiction, but I can't quite shake a feeling of artifice. The frame is a classic fictional device: I met a mysterious stranger who had obviously been through some great sorrow. She told me her story. I recount it here for you. It is unlikely and involves high romance and high tragedy. Then the mysterious stranger disappeared, and I am left with my many questions.
This might be a true story of a Chinese woman searching for her husband in the vastness of China and Tibet after his military unit reports him dead. However, I don't believe it. I've never read an account of the Chinese invasion of Tibet that felt like fluffy beach reading. Both professional reviewers and readers seem to share my sense that if this story is true, it has been liberally fictionalized. The publisher refers to it as "based on a true story," which sounds like fiction to me. In fact, many reviewers slip and refer to it as a "novel." As a work of nonfiction, it is not credible. As a novel, it over-relies on coincidence and is rather soppy and sentimental.
There are two other books with "Sky Burial" in the title. Caveat emptor.