Ocean, as Much as Rain

Stories, Lyrical Prose, and Poems from Tibet

Tsering Woeser, Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Dechen Pemba

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN:
  9781478061861
• Print ISBN:
  9781478033110
  9781478029687
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Criticism

Ocean, as Much as Rain presents for the first time in the English-language world a collection of masterfully translated literary writings by prominent Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser. In these stories, lyrical essays, and poetry, Woeser interweaves texts, photographs, silences, and documentary details. Featuring a distinctively imaginative use of satire and digressive rhetoric, Woeser's stories bring to life Tibetan characters whose lives are entwined with politics, history, and religion. Woeser illuminates the ruins and places that she has come across during her various sojourns in Chinese-ruled Tibet, reviving sites from the past of her parents and their generation. These writings range from ingenious retellings of cultural encounters and confrontation to insightful commentaries on ecological issues and tourism in Tibet that never shun contradictions, dilemmas, or questions about the future. With an introduction by Fiona Sze-Lorrain and an author interview by editors-translators Sze-Lorrain and Dechen Pemba, Ocean, as Much as Rain is a landmark publication that celebrates the work of a steadfast dissident and a leading Tibetan literary figure of our times.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Foreword by Pankaj Mishra
• Introduction: Ocean Can Be Rain: Woeser’s Poetry, Fiction, and Lyrical Prose by Fiona Sze-Lorrain
• Translation Credits
• 1. A Sheet of Paper Can Also Become a Knife
• 2. My Tongue Surgery
• 3. Spring
• 4. Rinchen the Sky-Burial Master
• 5. Tibet
• 6. Garpon La’s Offerings
• 7. On the Fifteenth Midnight of the Fourth Month in the Tibetan Calendar
• 8. Two Excerpts from The Prayer Beads of Fate
• 9. The King of Dzi
• 10. “Do Not Forget the Past . . .”
• 11. Celebrity Street Toilets in Lhasa
• 12. Ocean, as Much as Rain
• 13. Remembering a Smashed Buddha
• 14. The Ruins of Lhasa: Yabzhi Taktser
• 15. Let Me Write, the Fear of Lhasa Breaks My Heart
• 16. Only This Useless Poem—for Lobsang Tsepak
• 17. Back to Lhasa, Day One, from Seven Days in Lhasa
• 18. The Killing Trip
• 19. Few Years Later
• 20. Masks and Tea
• 21. An Eye from History and Reality: Woeser and Her Story of Tibet by Dechen Pemba and Fiona Sze-Lorrain
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary of Place Names
• Bibliography
• Biographies
• Index