1. Why has Pattison chosen an exiled Chinese as the main character, and the primary vehicle for explaining the very different world of Tibet? Why do you think he chose not to use a Tibetan as his main character?

2. After he is offered a chance to politically rehabilitate himself, "Shan stared at a dim, vaguely familiar ghost, his reflection in the window. It was happening. He was being reincarnated into a lower lifeform." What does this passage reveal about Shan's personality and the way Tibet has transformed his life?

3. As Shan descends into the skull cave shrine in Chapter Eight he undergoes a deep emotional reaction. "They weren't in the heart of the mountain," Pattison writes. "They were in the heart of the universe, and the numbing silence that welled around them wasn't a silence at all, but a soul wrenching hoarseness like the moment before a scream." How do the physical settings of this book help to heighten its drama?

4. How do The Skull Mantra's plotlines draw on differences between Chinese, Tibetan, and American cultures? Do those differences explain why each of the central characters approaches the underlying murder in a different way?

5. The lama Choje warns Shan about harboring too much hope. "It still consumes you," the lama says, "It makes you wrongly believe that you can strike against the world. It distracts you from what is important." What does Shan mean when he replies "I do not have the strength not to hope"?

6. Pattison provides several perspectives on Colonel Tan, the military commander. After reading the book, how do you see him? As a tyrant? A forgotten, bitter bureaucrat? A symbol of a heartless, intolerant government? A victim of the very persecutions he has carried out? How do Colonel Tan, Sergeant Feng, and Dr. Sung reflect what oppression can do to the oppressors?

7. Pattison has often noted that his books explore the relative nature of justice, that justice, like beauty, can be in the eye of the beholder. How does The Skull Mantra highlight how justice means different things to different people?

8. Yeshe serves as a symbol of the dilemma of the modern Tibetan, trying to live in two worlds. What is the real source of Yeshe's anguish at the end? Is it because he has by his own actions cut himself from any future life with the monks? Is it because he has let down Shan? Is it because he has lost all sense of his own identity?

9. Pattison's books evoke widely different reactions to their endings. How did you feel when finishing The Skull Mantra? Uplifted? Depressed? Angry? Despondent? Satisfied that justice has been done?

10. How do you think Tibetans react to this book? Chinese citizens? Chinese officials?