It has become steadily more difficult to find reasons to be hopeful about Myanmar. How to make sense of it all? These seven books go some way towards explaining a land of lamentations
I.B. Taurus; 288 pages; £19.99
For all her heroic defiance of Myanmar’s generals for much of her life, Ms Suu Kyi’s international reputation was badly tarnished by her attitude toward the Rohingyas. The army largely forced this Muslim minority out from the country, in 2017. That amounted to a genocide. She has not spoken out for the Rohingyas; perhaps she even shares the prejudice felt towards them by many of her fellow ethnic-Burmans, that they are not a genuine “minority” at all, but merely illegal Bengali migrants.
For a longer perspective read Thant Myint-U’s thoughtful “The River of Lost Footsteps”. This is part history, part memoir, by the anglicised scion of one of Burma’s most influential families; he is the grandson of U Thant, former secretary-general of the UN.
by Amitav Ghosh, an Indian writer. It opens dramatically as British forces storm the Glass Palace of the Burmese kings at Mandalay, the climax of the third Anglo-Burmese war in 1885. Mr Ghosh follows the last king into exile in British India, where the hours accumulated “like grains of sand until they buried him”. A large cast of characters takes the reader on an intricate tour through familial, colonial and political struggles in India and Malaya as well as Burma up to the 1990s.
If Thant Myint-U provides the historical perspective on Myanmar, Michael Vatikiotis provides the regional context in “Blood and Silk”. The author packs 40-odd years of living and working in South-East Asia into one well-organised volume; Mr Vatikiotis was editor of theand has worked as a conflict mediator in Myanmar, Thailand and the Philippines. His book demonstrates that even if Myanmar has failed to throw off the shackles of authoritarian rule, so too have most of its near neighbours.
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