Mr. Thant’s most impressive title to date. It features anecdotes from the author’s own extraordinary life and interviews with a wide range of his compatriots...Together these vignettes tell the story of a country still struggling to escape the legacy of dictatorship ... It’s when the account reaches the 1990s that the book soars, moving briskly to the present, illuminating both the surge of international optimism for Burma almost a decade ago and the current moment of renewed world-wide dismay toward the country.
... reflective and illuminating ... [Myint-U] writes briskly about Burma’s history as part of the British Raj ... The book’s focus is on the convulsions of the last 15 years, from a seemingly unshakable military dictatorship to the beginnings of democratic rule, but examining the legacy of Burma’s colonial past is crucial to grasping what’s happened more recently ... a learned yet also intimate book ... an urgent book about a heavy subject, but Thant Myint-U is a writer with a humane sensibility and a delicate yet pointed touch.
Thant’s bird’s-eye view, long-term scholarship, and deep connection to Burma and its people make for a captivating and engrossing account of a country shifting precariously between possibility and destruction.
... engrossing ... should become a guiding reference work for how we view the new Myanmar ... Readers are given a deep dive into the history, myths and atavistic fears of the dominant ethnic Burmese, and their relations with the country’s many minorities ... Thant Myint-U does not let his countrymen off the hook for what Rohingya victims describe as crimes against humanity, and prosecutors at the International Court of Justice are seeking to prove genocide. However, he succeeds in putting the violence in the broader context we need to grasp it ... a sympathetic but sobering account, told elegantly and eruditely by one of the people who understands Myanmar best. Yet the book is, for its virtues, sparing in its assessment of Aung San Suu Kyi’s record in office, a relevant topic for a powerful leader set for re-election to a second term later this year. If Myanmar is turning into an illiberal democracy like Narendra Modi’s India or Viktor Orban’s Hungary — which hosted Aung San Suu Kyi last year — perhaps we should not be surprised.
The book frequently serves as a frontline account of events, featuring personal insight into many of the key figures in the transition, and insider accounts of the painstaking, frustrating work of diplomacy as well as agonizing examples of missed opportunities. By immersing the reader in the difficulties of, for example, organizing disaster relief with a sclerotic government, Thant Myint-U hints at how even a mythologized figure like Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi could not produce the miraculous change international observers hoped for ... shows that reforms often fixed the easiest of Burma's problems, doing nothing to address the country's more fundamental challenges ... For Western observers who may have seen the crackdown on the Rohingya as a shocking reversal of recent trends, this book is a sobering corrective, an account of how the nation arrived at a crisis point and how the international community embraced a hopeful, misleading narrative.
How did Burma’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi go from Nobel Peace Prize laureate to figurehead for a regime accused of genocide?...Thant offers a lucid, albeit complex, answer in this essential analysis of modern Burmese history ... Thant briskly synthesizes insider accounts, news reports, and academic research to make his authoritative case. This perceptive chronicle is vital for understanding Burma’s transition to democratic rule and sobering future prospects.
This book promises an insider’s view of the country’s political transition, but in many ways the events described bear out the perils of western thinking on Burma, which Myint-U mordantly summarised in The River of Lost Footsteps...'The military government is bad, Aung San Suu Kyi good, and the international community needs to apply pressure on Rangoon and pressure means no aid, trade sanctions and more isolation' ... At a time when the failures of capitalism have become all too apparent worldwide, Aung San Suu Kyi seems to be rehashing proven mistakes. 'Twentieth-century solutions,” Myint-U accurately warns, “are being offered as the default answers to the country’s 21st-century challenges.'
