Before her birth in the Himalayan foothills of Nepal, the village astrologers made a prediction: if she were to be a girl, Durga Pokhrel would be as powerful as a son. No one could have foretold the emotional power of her astonishing true story.

Durga was an unwanted daughter, raised in a strict, traditional upper-caste Hindu family. She was already a rebellious teenager when a devastating family secret turned her world upside down. Politics became her refuge, Nepal's underground democratic movement her cause.

Blacklisted by the government, arrested many times and imprisoned altogether for two years, driven from her job as a university lecturer, disowned by her status-conscious family, and forced to live in dire poverty, she stubbornly fought to bring freedom to her country. Shadow over Shangri-la will inspire you much in the way that Durga inspired her fellow prisoners. It is a moving story about a remarkable woman whose inner strength shows the indomitable power of the human spirit.