A Tibetan Girl Called Ata
By Xiao Hei
Publisher: Bamboo Scroll Books
Published: July 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781919263908
Genre: Romantic Saga, Asian Fiction
Inspired by a true story.
Lhasa, 2008. A year of profound upheaval, when history and politics collide with the lives of ordinary people.
When a Han Chinese man falls deeply in love with a young Tibetan woman named Ata, their passion draws them into a world already torn apart by mistrust, tension and unrest.
Their love is immediate, profound—and dangerously out of place.
As Lhasa erupts around them, the forces dividing Han Chinese and Tibetans begin to invade their private world. Caught between love, identity and history, they find themselves on a heartbreaking journey from which there may be no escape.
Only far too late do they discover the devastating truth: sometimes love cannot save us from the world we are born into—and the price of loving in the wrong place, at the wrong time, can be everything.
About the Author
Xiao Hei (pen name of Zhang Pu) is a Chinese-born British writer and translator based in London. He is the Chinese translator of Jung Chang’s internationally acclaimed Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, one of the most widely read books about modern China. A writer and journalist with a long career in publishing, he has written fiction, non-fiction, essays and political commentary, with a particular interest in China’s history, culture, politics and the complexities of identity.
His novel A Tibetan Girl Called Ata, inspired by a true story and set against the turmoil of Lhasa in 2008, is his first novel to be published in English.
