In 1949 the People's Liberation Army of China sent troops into Tibet. At first Chinese soldiers behaved respectfully towards the local people, distributing clothes, blankets, tools, medicine and even money. Soon, however, it became clear that a new era in Tibetan history had begun, namely one of oppression, atrocities and...resistance. Tibet's Forgotten Heroes is a unique historical document on Tibetan resistance to Chinese oppression.

For the very first time since the events, forty-eight stories by Tibetan warriors involved in the struggle for freedom are given unabridged, creating a vivid and emotional spectrum of events in Tibet since 1949. Birgit van de Wijer has been careful to provide an honest transcription of the interviews, acting only as a 'service hatch'.

The first hand interviews as well as the translation into English were conducted by native Tibetans. The book is the result of a two years work with dozens of Tibetans involved.

Robert Byron was one of the twentieth century's greatest travel writers as well as a noted art critic and historian. Byron's The Road to Oxiana is considered by many to be the first example of great travel writing; Paul Fussell said that it is to the travel book what "Ulysses is to the novel between the wars and what The Waste Land is to poetry"; Bruce Chatwin described it as "a sacred text, beyond criticism", carrying his copy, "spineless and floodstained" on four journeys through Central Asia. Robert Byron also wrote Europe in the Looking Glass, The Byzantine Achievement and The Station. He died in 1941, at the age of 35, when the ship on which he was travelling was torpedoed by a German U-Boat in the Atlantic.