Kundun: A Biography of the Family of the Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama isn't the only religious icon in his family. He has two brothers who are also tulkas, or reincarnated religious leaders, and his parents and other siblings became revered by dint of their relationships to him. Mary Craig chronicles this intriguing web of familial, religious, and national loyalties that bind these people to a destiny unsought and unshakable.

Craig presents this god-king and his family in plain, human terms: from poor peasant upbringing, to tedious and isolated education, to bewilderment at the utter complexity of the political affairs he and his family are fated to confront. In Kundun, you enter the daily life of this family to experience the simple beauty of Tibetan culture, the trauma of brutal oppression and exile, and the protracted hope of redemption through nonviolent resistance.

Controversy plays no part in Craig's depiction, and the few sensitive areas that she does expose are glossed over as unresolved. She reveals the weaknesses of the tulka system and relates how even tulkas may question the truth of their own supposed reincarnation.