Jonguo is a story that emerges from memories of an architect fleeing Beijing. His tale starts in the year of Chinese Olympics when he left his homeland Poland on his bicycle driven by a somewhat naïve desire to find a new spiritual path in Tibet. His hopes are dashed by the bloodily suppressed uprising and the authorities who isolate the Buddhist “roof of the world” form the public eye. People blame something called Jonguo for causing all the evil he has witnessed. In this retrospective, the outwardly chaotic pieces gradually merge into a coherent whole. As the story unfolds, the initially impartial tone of an observant reporter gradually takes on qualities of a man obsessed. The narrator becomes a victim of the materialization of his own fears that steam, ironically, form the investigation. Based on a true story, it is a unique cross-genre book that challenges the standards of a travel documentary with subtle doses of unreality. By using elements of fiction the author brings forth the issue of research, objectivism, and the presentation of factual information. How do we separate “the truth” from its speaker? How do we unburden ourselves from our biases and convictions?
