Essays by those who have nowhere to call home

For generations of Tibetans born in exile, their homeland is an imagined, mythical one, with history as their father and the culture that nourishes them as their mother.

- Nirupama Menon Rao

But more than that borrowed memory of their history, freedom and liberation constantly fire their imagination. This is the courage that sustains them, although Tibet's tragedy is that its people were alone in fighting for their homeland, and the rest of humanity did not rally to their cause. It is a savage world from which the tap of history drips. The Penguin Book Of Modern Tibetan Essays, edited by Tenzin Dickie, is a collection of 28 non-fiction essays by 22 writers that draws on this memory as well as this imagination.

This collection is a meditation on exile seen through the eyes of Tibetans across continents, far from the place they call their country, their home. It is also an exploration of the meaning of home and the nature of the displacement that every author in this volume has confronted. In doing so, and in the very enquiry into the meaning of that displacement, these writings are quintessentially moving in the message they convey, of a homeland and a safe harbour that no longer exists, that can no longer welcome them.

Like Dante exiled from his beloved Florence, for exiled Tibetans, exile is their only reality. For those of us who belong to a nation, it is hard to understand the plain fact that for the exile, there is nowhere to call home. Pablo Neruda's words are recalled: "Night comes down, but your stars are missing." We have flags to fight for and rally around, and the world recognises that, but for the Tibetans-in-exile, there are no Olympic contingents, or a flag to be flown at the United Nations.