Tibetsk denky 1954 – Prvn eskoslovent nvtvnci Lhasy: Tibet oima slavnho kameramana Vani Josef (2025)

This Czech-language critical edition presents the diary entries of the first Czechoslovak visitors to Tibet. Cinematographer Josef Vani and director Vladimr Ss each kept a diary during their journey. Their entries capture Tibet just a few years after the Chinese occupation, when the country, its people and its culture still retained much of the former society, then led by the eighteen-year-old Dalai Lama, whom the authors met personally. The diaries contain a wealth of unknown and new information about Chinese and Tibetan society at the time, together with numerous previously unpublished photographs. The diary of director Vladimr Ss, offering a parallel yet in many respects different perspective, is published as a separate volume. Editors Lubo Blka, a scholar of religion specialising in Tibetan Buddhism, and sinologist Kamila Hladkov accompany the original texts with studies of their historical, political and social context.