I chose ‘Interesting Places of the Past in Yangon’ for the first of the non-fiction reviews for its ‘every-book’ qualities. There is a common thread in many non-fiction books in translation from Myanmar …
Along with poetry, short stories are the most popular form of literary expression in Myanmar. Many of the greats of the Burmese literary canon from the 1920’s onwards have dabbled in both …
One of the hopes of my book, The People Elsewhere, was to shine a light on the misconception that all languages and literature from the ethnic nationality groups in Myanmar had been suppressed by successive juntas over fifty years. The reality is much more complicated of course …
There is no shortage of books on the market that delve into the life of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Peter Popham’s ‘The Lady and the Peacock’ and his more recent ‘The Lady and the Generals’, Justin Wintle’s ‘Perfect Hostage’, Bertil Lintner’s ‘Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s Struggle for Democracy’ among them …
One of the many pleasures of the abolition of pre-publication censorship is the re-emergence of forgotten or erased works that can now be safely published. The 12 poems from the eponymous title have been scoured from among many of Aung Cheimt’s works, dating back to 1995 …