| Author |
Thant Myint-U.
|
| Title |
The river of lost footsteps : histories of Burma / Thant Myint-U. |
| Edition |
First edition. |
| OCLC |
65064707 |
| ISBN |
0374163421 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
|
9780374163426 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
| ISBN/ISSN |
9780374163426 |
| Publisher |
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. |
| Description |
xiv, 361 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 24 cm |
| LC Subject heading/s |
Burma -- History -- 1824-1948.
|
|
Burma -- History -- 1948-
|
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [349]-361). |
| Contents |
The fall of the kingdom -- Debating Burma -- Foundations -- Pirates and princes along the bay of Bengal -- The consequences of patriotism -- War -- Mandalay -- Transitions -- Studying in the age of extremism -- Making the battlefield -- Alternative utopias -- The tiger's tail -- Palimpsest. |
| Summary |
Thant 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, dramatic, and appalling. 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. 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. Through their stories and others, he portrays Burma's rise and decline in the modern world, from the time of Portuguese pirates and renegade Mughal princes through the decades of British colonialism, the devastation of World War II, and a sixty-year civil war that continues today and is the longest-running war anywhere in the world.--From publisher description. |
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