The quest for one of nature's most inspiring and elusive predators becomes a window into the history, conquest, and culture of Tibet in the thought-provoking What's a Snow Leopard to You? by Taiwanese author Chen-Fu Hsu, translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin. The novel, Hsu's first, won the 2021 Taiwan Literature Award under the title Taming the Blue Sheep.
An unnamed Taiwanese natural sciences graduate student receives feedback that his novel about snow leopards would be stronger if he actually saw one. He secures permission to spend 72 days at an NGO conservation outpost on the Tibetan Plateau, looking for an animal "with spots like scattered black poppies" that can blend into the landscape as though it has "become a stone, or inconspicuous flakes among falling snow." Tibet captivates the student and inspires return journeys. Chinese security officials confiscate several of his books about Tibetan unrest and the experiences of Tibetan exiles, but he retains a rare diary called Taming Sheep written in Japanese by a Buddhist monk who traveled in the region during Tibet's annexation. Readers see the depth and vitality of Tibetan culture as well as the loss, brutality, and change that have shaped modern-day Tibet through chapters alternating between the student's and monk's accounts.
Hsu blends lyrical nature writing and musings on Tibetan art and religion with tense, graphic depictions of violent occupation. Readers should have some familiarity with Tibetan history before diving into this poetic, moving look at the highest region on Earth. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads