The Dalai Lama's first autobiography, My Land and My People, was published in 1962, a few years after he reestablished himself in India and before he became an international celebrity.

[1] In the introduction, the Dalai Lama explains that he wrote the book "to counter Chinese claims and misinformation" about the history of Tibet.

[3] The idea for a second autobiography came from a British journalist, Alexander Norman, in the 1980s, who sat and taped the Dalai Lama for "several hours at a time" and wrote the book out of the manuscripts.

The book acknowledges "the cultural gaps between traditional Tibetan Buddhism and the scientific approaches of the West", and also elucidates the points of similarity between the two.

[4] Freedom in Exile was timed to be released around the anti-Communist Revolutions of 1989, and the Dalai Lama's winning of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize.