Lama's novel spans 50 years and three generations, vividly documenting one family's attempts to stay faithful to time-honored traditions.” —New York Times Book Review
“Newly orphaned and stranded in a Nepalese refugee camp after fleeing Chinese invaders, the Tibetan sisters must navigate an unknown world. Lama… brings a personal perspective to the plight of refugees and immigrants as they try to assimilate while honoring their pasts.” —Washington Post
“Wise and devastating ... Through the heartbreaking, yet hopeful story of one Tibetan family's struggle to survive and their yearning for liberation, she delivers a stirring love letter to a country and culture. A must-read and a marvel.” —Jessamine Chan, New York Times bestselling author of THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS
“Showcases a writer of rare talent and uncompromising vision. A triumph.” —Maaza Mengiste, author of THE SHADOW KING, shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize
“A true polished gem of a novel, every sentence is a revelation. Built out of both myth and history, Tsering Lama's first novel marks the debut of a stunning new voice.” —Gary Shteyngart, author of SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY and OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS
“We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies asks what happens when colonialism and cruelty take your homeland. Is it gone forever? What remains in the mind and heart? Can loss be restored? A haunting novel of family and exile, written with beauty, authenticity, and grace.” —David Ebershoff, author of THE DANISH GIRL and THE 19TH WIFE
“This wildly beautiful novel, epic in scale, moves back and forth in time and across continents as it traces three generations of a Tibetan family and tells the story of their lives as exiles. The narrative, which begins with China's 1959 invasion of Tibet, is gorgeously structured, the story told with tenderness and with a restrained but felt passion that makes the lives of its characters-their individuality as well as the cultural, historical, and familial bonds that shape their destinies-palpable. This is a magnificently textured and deeply affecting novel.” —Jay Neugeboren, Ploughshares
“Born in Nepal to exiled Tibetan parents, Lama beautifully conveys both the harshness of the refugee experience and a people's fierce loyalty to a country that most will never see in their lifetimes . . . At once brutally realistic and threaded through with romance and the supernatural, Lama's tale captures the essence of a deracinated people whose plight is frequently mentioned but never remedied … Lama has packed a whole lot into her tale, sharing with her readers the frightening realities of invasion and flight, the unexpected sweetness of romance and the outrages of cultural appropriation. Mostly we'll remember her primary focus: the tenacious identity of a people forever cast out from home.” —Toronto Star
“A moving debut centering the little-known experiences of Tibetan exiles, told through the lives of four people over 50 years.” —Ms. Magazine
“[An] achingly beautiful debut.” —Booklist, Starred Review
“[A] heartfelt and magical saga of a Tibetan family's love, sacrifice, and heritage … Lama imbues this mesmerizing tale-informed by her own family fleeing Tibet for Nepal in the 1960s-with a rich sense of history, mysticism, and ritual.” —Publishers Weekly
“Evocative and often hauntingly poetic.” —California Review of Books
“The novel thrives as a story about sisterhood, parenthood, and the heart-piercing feeling of exile … A smart, sweeping story about the abuse and transformation of a culture stripped of its country.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Tsering Yangzom Lama's debut announces a thrilling new talent in global literature. We Measure The Earth With Our Bodies is a gorgeous, thoughtful novel, one that wrestles with history and culpability in ways that feel moving and profound.” —Victor LaValle, author of THE CHANGELING
“In chapters that toggle back and forth across time and between continents, the narrative structure makes for a richly textured read. It also echoes the experience of displacement, in which the memory of belonging is not confined to some distant past, but rather endures as a pressing absence that shapes the present with both loss and profound love.” —BOMB Magazine
“This is the new piece of fiction that belongs on your summer reading list.” —Tricycle: The Buddhist Review
“This symphonic novel sweeps like a long wave to its transcendent, devastating conclusion. A story about the violence of exile, but also about the bright threads of love that tie these characters to their culture, their ancestral land, and each other: an intelligent, adaptable love that offers them their survival. Sentence by sentence, Lama builds an unforgettable world, sharpened by the force of her characters' longing. You must hand your heart over to this astonishing novel-it will be better for the breaking.” —Shruti Swamy, author of THE ARCHER and A HOUSE IS A BODY
“A beautiful and necessary book that tells of how displacement and colonialism can be internalized in the body, and fought with for decades, if not centuries. Tsering Yangzom Lama's writing is beautifully eerie. Her characters are haunted by the ghosts of those who lost their lives when their home was invaded and contain the land - the mountains, valleys, lakes - they were forced to leave behind. They travel out of Tibet with very little, but their baggage is a lot; Lama handles her difficult subject with such artfulness and tenderness. There's lightness, love, humour - but all of this exists in the shadow of inescapable loss. Lama writes with a deep and intimate understanding of injustice on a scale most of us will never in our lives have to experience ourselves. This is an important book, and Lama is an incredible new voice in literature. We are lucky to have her.” —Claire Kohda, author of WOMAN, EATING
“This coming-of-age tale within the larger narrative lends greater perspective on alienation and agency, and is refreshing in its refusal of tropes about discovering identity, especially in unfamiliar worlds.” —David Chau, Quill & Quire
03/14/2022
Lama debuts with the heartfelt and magical saga of a Tibetan family’s love, sacrifice, and heritage. Starting in 1960, Lama interweaves the lives of four characters: Lhamo and her younger sister Tenkyi, whose parents are killed during their flight from Tibet to Nepal, where they resettle in a village for refugees; Lhamo’s daughter Dolma; and Samphel, Lhamo’s childhood love, whom she meets in Nepal. Lama also explores the influence of a ku—an ancient statue that Samphel’s uncle brings into Lhamo’s village—on each of their lives. Lhamo, despite heartache, encourages her younger sister to leave their village to study in India and improve her future prospects. Decades later, in another act of selflessness, Lhamo suggests her daughter join Tenkyi, now in Toronto, to complete her studies and have a better life. When Dolma discovers the ku of Lhamo’s childhood in the possession of a private collector in Canada, she sets in motion a series of events that illustrate the power of the ancient relic and its hold on Lhamo’s family. Lama imbues this mesmerizing tale—informed by her own family fleeing Tibet for Nepal in the early 1960s— with a rich sense of history, mysticism, and ritual. This brings great revelations and significance to a family’s courage and acts of cultural preservation. (May)
12/01/2021
When China invades Tibet in 1959, sisters Lhamo and Tenkyi survive the arduous journey to a refugee camp in Nepal, but their parents do not. Struggling to rebuild their lives, the sisters are heartened when another refugee comes bearing the statue of a nameless saint said to appear in times of need. Decades later, Lhamo's Toronto-based daughter Dolma discovers the statue in a collector's vault and determines to reclaim it for her family and community. With a 50,000-copy first printing.
2022-03-02
The aftereffects of the oppression of Tibetans across two continents and six decades powers this domestic epic.
Lama’s debut novel opens in 1960, a decade after China’s invasion of Tibet and shortly after a quelled uprising and exile of the Dalai Lama. Lhamo and Tenkyi, two sisters, are forced to leave for a refugee camp in Nepal and orphaned not long after. From there, the girls’ paths diverge: Lhamo remains in Nepal as the camp becomes a tent city, has a daughter, and attempts to maintain the spiritual traditions stamped out by the Chinese. Bookish Tenkyi, meanwhile, leaves for Canada and, by 2012, takes in Lhamo’s daughter, Dolma, an aspiring scholar of Tibetan culture. The non-Tibetan academics Dolma meets are knowledgeable but also condescending, and Westerners’ callousness toward her heritage is symbolized by a statue of a “Nameless Saint” that Dolma believes is a stolen family heirloom. Dolma’s investigations bring her deeper into her family history, the ethically messy artifacts trade, and Tibetan spirituality, culminating in a trek to the edge of the country she’s exiled from. Lama’s delivery can be somewhat stiff—romantic interludes feel flat, and Dolma’s dialogue is sometimes sodden with explication of Tibetan political history and spiritual practice. But the novel thrives as a story about sisterhood, parenthood, and the heart-piercing feeling of exile. Dolma can’t bring herself to admire Toronto’s “Little Tibet” neighborhood, which she sees as a “copy of a copy of home. Another temporary stop in an endless journey.” (The frustrations are exemplified by Tenkyi's dashed hopes of becoming a teacher; she works as a hotel housekeeper.) And Lama wisely gives the novel multiple narrators—Lhamo, Tenkyi, Dolma, and Samphel, a childhood friend of the sisters—who capture the breadth of Tibetan culture and the range of emotional impacts of separation.
A smart, sweeping story about the abuse and transformation of a culture stripped of its country.
