Farrar, Straus and Giroux #ad - But what do we really know about burma and its history? and what can burma's past tell us about the present and even its future?In The River of Lost Footsteps, dramatic, Thant Myint-U tells the story of modern Burma, in part through a telling of his own family's history, in an interwoven narrative that is by turns lyrical, and appalling.

For nearly two decades western governments and a growing activist community have been frustrated in their attempts to bring about a freer and more democratic Burma—through sanctions and tourist boycotts—only to see an apparent slide toward even harsher dictatorship. And on his father's side, the author is descended from a long line of courtiers who served at Burma's Court of Ava for nearly two centuries.

The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma #ad - Through their stories and others, the devastation of world war ii, from the time of Portuguese pirates and renegade Mughal princes through the decades of British colonialism, he portrays Burma's rise and decline in the modern world, and a sixty-year civil war that continues today and is the longest-running war anywhere in the world.

The river of lost footsteps is a work both personal and global, a distinctive contribution that makes Burma accessible and enthralling. His maternal grandfather, u thant, rose from being the schoolmaster of a small town in the Irrawaddy Delta to become the UN secretary-general in the 1960s.

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The Glass Palace: A Novel

Random House #ad - He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her. Coetzee“there is no denying Ghosh’s command of culture and history. The struggles that have made burma, india, and Malaya the places they are today are illuminated in this wonderful novel by the writer Chitra Divakaruni calls “a master storyteller.

Praise for the glass palace“an absorbing story of a world in transition, brought to life through characters who love and suffer with equal intensity. J. He proves a writer of supreme skill and intelligence. The atlantic monthly“i will never forget the young and old Rajkumar, the Princesses, the forests of teak, Dolly, the wealth that made families and wars.

National bestseller • named one of the best books of the year by the new york times book review and los angeles times“a rich, in our globalized culture, layered epic that probes the meaning of identity and homeland— a literary territory that is as resonant now, as it was when the sun never set on the British Empire.

The Glass Palace: A Novel #ad - Los angeles times book reviewset in burma during the british invasion of 1885, this masterly novel tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life.

M. An incredible story. Grace paley“A novelist of dazzling ingenuity.

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Under the Dragon: A Journey through Burma

wander2wonder press #ad - He has won awards from the canada council and the Arts Council of England as well as a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship, and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary prize. On his journey maclean exposed the tragedy of a hundred betrayals, giving voice to those too frightened to speak for themselves.

A fellow of the royal society of Literature, Rory divides his time between London and Berlin. In so doing he illuminated a nation of paradoxes woven together like a basket: love and hate, kindness and cruelty, faith and hopelessness, freedom and slavery, selflessness and greed. Travelling from rangoon to mandalay and pagan, basket weavers, into the heart of the Golden Triangle, he heard stories of freedom fighters, government censors, farmers and lovers -- ordinary people struggling to survive under one of the most brutal and repressive regimes in the world.

His ten books, including uk best-sellers ‘stalin’s nose’ and ‘under the Dragon’, have challenged and invigorated creative non-fiction writing, and – according to the late John Fowles – are among works that ‘marvellously explain why literature still lives’. Under the dragon is an important, a golden land that was shot through with desperation and fear, historical and heartbreaking portrayal of Burma in the days before the recent reforms, perceptive, but also – in even the darkest places -- with beauty and courage.

Under the Dragon: A Journey through Burma #ad - About the authorrory macLean is one of Britain’s most expressive and adventurous travel writers. He has worked on movies with marlene Dietrich and David Bowie, and written and presented over 50 BBC radio programmes. He met aung san suu kyi, the most courageous woman of our time and the embodiment of all Burma’s hope.

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Finding George Orwell in Burma

Penguin Books #ad - A fascinating political travelogue that traces the life and work of george orwell, also known as Myanmar, author of 1984 and ANIMAL FARM, in Southeast Asia Over the years the American writer Emma Larkin has spent traveling in Burma, she's come to know all too well the many ways this brutal police state can be described as "Orwellian.

The life of the mind exists in a state of siege in Burma, and it long has. But burma's connection to George Orwell is not merely metaphorical; it is much deeper and more real. More important, she finds that the path she charts leads her to the people who have found ways to somehow resist the soul-crushing effects of life in this most cruel police state.

And george orwell's moral clarity, hatred of injustice, and keen powers of observation serve as the author's compass in another sense too: they are qualities she shares and they suffuse her book - the keenest and finest reckoning with life in this police state that has yet been written. Using orwell enables her to show, the weight of the colonial experience on Burma today, effortlessly, the ghosts of which are invisible and everywhere.

Finding George Orwell in Burma #ad - It is the place george orwell's work holds in Burma today, however, that most struck Emma Larkin. When orwell died, the novel-in-progress on his desk was set in Burma. When larkin quietly asked one burmese intellectual if he knew the work of george Orwell, "Ah, he stared blankly for a moment and then said, you mean the prophet!" In one of the most intrepid political travelogues in recent memory, Emma Larkin tells of the year she spent traveling through Burma using the life and work of George Orwell as her compass.

Going from mandalay and rangoon to poor delta backwaters and up to the old hill-station towns in the mountains of Burma's far north, Larkin visits the places where Orwell worked and lived, and the places his books live still.

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Letters From Burma

Penguin #ad - Letters from burma - an unforgettable collection from the nobel Peace prize winner Aung San Suu KyiIn these astonishing letters, Aung San Suu Kyi reaches out beyond Burma's borders to paint for her readers a vivid and poignant picture of her native land. Here she celebrates the courageous army officers, academics, actors and everyday people who have supported the National League for Democracy, often at great risk to their own lives.

She was placed under house arrest in rangoon in 1989, where she remained for almost 15 of the 21 years until her release in 2010, becoming one of the world's most prominent political prisoners. She also evokes the beauty of the country's seasons and scenery, customs and festivities that remain so close to her heart.

Letters From Burma #ad - Through these remarkable letters, the reader catches a glimpse of exactly what is at stake as Suu Kyi fights on for freedom in Burma, and of the love for her homeland that sustains her non-violent battle. Includes an introduction from fergal keane'aung san suu kyi has become a global symbol of peaceful resistance, courage and apparently endless endurance' Guardian'A real hero in an age of phony phone-in celebrity, which hands out that title freely to the most spoiled and underqualified' Bono, TimeAung San Suu Kyi is the leader of Burma's National League for Democracy.

She reveals the impact of political decisions on the people of Burma, from the terrible cost to the children of imprisoned dissidents - allowed to see their parents for only fifteen minutes every fortnight - to the effect of inflation on the national diet and of state repression on traditions of hospitality.

She is also the author of the collection of writings Freedom from Fear.

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Burmese Days

Mariner Books #ad - A handful of englishmen living in a settlement in Burma congregate in the European Club, drink whiskey, and argue over an impending order to admit a token Asian. Orwell draws on his years of experience in India to tell this story of the waning days of British imperialism.

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Myanmar's Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim 'Other' Asian Arguments

Zed Books #ad - But in recent years this narrative has been upended. In june 2012, violence between buddhists and Muslims erupted in western Myanmar, pointing to a growing divide between religious communities that before had received little attention from the outside world. This violence, was spurred on by monks, breaking out amid the passage to democracy, pro-democracy activists and even politicians.

In this gripping and deeply reported account, francis wade explores how the manipulation of identities by an anxious ruling elite has laid the foundations for mass violence, and how, in Myanmar’s case, some of the most respected and articulate voices for democracy have turned on the Muslim population at a time when the majority of citizens are beginning to experience freedoms unseen for half a century.

Myanmar's Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim 'Other' Asian Arguments #ad - For decades myanmar has been portrayed as a case of good citizen versus bad regime – men in jackboots maintaining a suffocating rule over a majority Buddhist population beholden to the ideals of non-violence and tolerance. Attacks on muslims soon spread across the country, entire neighbourhoods turned to rubble, leaving hundreds dead, and tens of thousands of Muslims confined to internment camps.

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Greetings from Myanmar: Exploring the Price of Progress in One of the Last Countries on Earth to Open for Business Kindle Single

#ad - Traversing the country, a local vendor with a flair for painting nudes, he encounters a pompous Western businessman swindling his way to millions, and long ago legends of a western circus. More information available here: www. Davidbockino. Com. Cover design by Evan Twohy. Sensitively written and expertly researched, greetings from myanmar: exploring the Price of Progress in One of the Last Countries on Earth to Open for Business is the story of a flourishing nation still very much in limbo and an answer to the hard questions that arise when tourism not only charts, but shapes a place as well.

David bockino is an assistant professor in the School of Communications at Elon University. He was born and raised in new York and currently lives in Durham, North Carolina with his wife, son, and daughter. In just a few years, and isolation from the international community to being hailed “World’s Best Tourist Destination”—a seemingly impossible transition that led David Bockino, on a search to find out exactly what happened, in 2015, dictatorship, Myanmar has gone from destitution, and how.

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The Trouser People – Burma in the Shadows of the Empire

River Books #ad - Marshall offers a heart-rending view of what life holds for those in the grip of Burma’s military. The guardian‘marshall has travelled bravely and his Brit-gonzo journalism made me laugh, think and look very hard at places and peoples that disappear off our mental maps. The independent‘An evocative travel book and an adventure story.

. His journey is an offbeat exploration of Britain’s lost heritage – and a powerful exposé of Burma’s modern tragedy. This new edition includes marshall’s gripping eyewitness account of the Saffron Revolution, the 2007 democratic uprising led by Burmese monks. Immensely readable. The trouser people towers above all other contemporary books on Burma.

The Trouser People – Burma in the Shadows of the Empire #ad - Bertil lintner, author of Outrage: Burma’s Struggle for Democracy. Inspired by the diaries of a forgotten victorian adventurer called Sir George Scott, Andrew Marshall set out to discover the real Burma – an impoverished nation ruled by a repressive regime. Scott was a die-hard imperialist who hacked, bullied and charmed his way through uncharted jungles to help establish British colonial rule.

Braving government spies and the after-effects of some powerful local hooch, Marshall retraces Scott’s intrepid footsteps into Burma’s remote tribal heartlands to encounter the bewitching ‘giraffe women’ and the former headhunters of the Wild Wa. Marshall is a gifted writer. The new york times‘The stuff of ripping yarns.

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Miss Burma: A Novel

Grove Press #ad - As louisa navigates her newfound fame, the west’s ongoing covert dealings in her country, she is forced to reckon with her family’s past, and her own loyalty to the cause of the Karen people. Craig wields powerful and vivid prose to illuminate a country and a family trapped not only by war and revolution, but also by desire and loss.

Viet thanh nguyen, husband and wife, pulitzer prize–winning author  Miss Burma tells the story of modern-day Burma through the eyes of Benny and Khin, and their daughter Louisa. At once beautiful and heartbreaking .  .  . An incredible family saga. Refinery29   “miss burma charts both a political history and a deeply personal one—and of those incendiary moments when private and public motivations overlap.

Miss Burma: A Novel #ad - Los angeles Times. Years later, benny and khin’s eldest child, has a danger-filled, Louisa, tempestuous childhood and reaches prominence as Burma’s first beauty queen soon before the country falls to dictatorship. World war ii comes to southeast asia, and benny and Khin must go into hiding in the eastern part of the country during the Japanese occupation, beginning a journey that will lead them to change the country’s history.

Based on the story of the author’s mother and grandparents,  Miss Burma is a captivating portrait of how modern Burma came to be and of the ordinary people swept up in the struggle for self-determination and freedom. After attending school in calcutta, then part of the British Empire, a woman who is part of a long-persecuted ethnic minority group, and falls in love with Khin, Benny settles in Rangoon, the Karen.