The week's top read

Don't be ashamed if you haven't heard of Sun Shuyun. By the end of the summer you probably will have. Sun Shuyun is a Chinese documentary film-maker who has just published her first book, Ten Thousand Miles Without A Cloud (HarperCollins, £17.99), a beautifully written and moving history-cum-memoir.

The history part of the book concerns Xuanguang, a 7th-century Confucian monk who travelled far and wide through Central Asia in search of true Buddhism.

The memoir part tells how Sun Shuyun herself grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution and was inspired to follow in his footsteps after she had read his book, 'an encyclopedia of the history and culture of the time... the testimony to a lost world'. She talks to Amartya Sen and will sign copies of the book.