Three Cups of Tea Author: Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

044 Project 3 Example

Book Title: Three Cups of Tea Author: Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

Setting: Remote villages of Pakistan, Kashmir Region, USA (California and Montana)

Characters: the main character is Greg Mortenson. There is a very large number of other characters, including some famous people, such as Sir Edmund Hillary; but most of the characters are people of Pakistan. This book is non-fiction.

Time: from late 1993 to 2006.

Plot: This book describes the passionate work of one man, Greg Mortenson, in remote mountain villages of Pakistan, where he established fifty-five schools (many of them for girls). His story began as a story of failure, when Mortenson, who was an avid climber, ended up almost dead in a remote village in the Karakoram Mountains after a failed attempt to climb K2. Meeting people, whose kindness helped them in spite of their own dire circumstances and poverty, inspired Mortenson to come back and thank them by building a school for their community. He went back to the States and for a year slept in his car, while working as a nurse in California and saving money to raise $12,000 necessary to build the school. Eventually, he was able to interest some wealthy people in his project. As a result, a school was built not only in the village of Korphe, but in many other regions of Pakistan. The story is full of interesting commentaries about differences between the Western and the Eastern word, the power of human spirit and the things different cultures can learn from each other.

Personal opinion:

I liked this book because I enjoy learning more about different cultures and ways of life. Moreover, it was interesting to see how one man who had not idea about how to build a school in the first place, ended up getting a vision to do something greater than himself and actually doing it. The book is also the story of diplomacy, since Mortenson had to cater both to the rich (sponsors in the US) and the poor, work in between different faiths and even in places of danger (the book describes his encounter with the Taliban. I would recommend this book to those who like a good piece of inspirational, cross-cultural non-fiction.