Beautifully crafted, with graceful, vivid prose, Lhasa: Streets with Memories presents an evocative and multilayered account of Lhasa, Tibet's capital. Its nine short chapters interweave several narratives in what Robert Barnett describes as “an attempt to scrape a little of the topsoil off the affective history” (p. xii) of the city. The book reads Lhasa's streets and architecture as a text through which the aspirations and ideologies of its builders can be excavated and examined. The city is a palimpsest, with eight distinct architectural styles inscribed on its surface at different times, through specific conjunctures of political, economic, and cultural forces.

This history of Lhasa, read through its changing urban form, is interwoven throughout the book with another narrative, both more personal and gripping: Barnett's recollections of his own interactions with Lhasa residents, beginning with the aftermath of the demonstration that he witnessed in October 1987. These fragmented shards of...

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