Letters From Burma

For the last two decades of Burma's brutal and traumatic history, Aung San Suu Kyi – winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize – has been the inspirational leader of attempts to restore democracy to her country. In these pieces, begun soon after her first release from house arrest (she has since been re-arrested and remains to this day a prisoner of conscience), she paints a vivid, distributing, yet fundamentally optimistic picture of her native land.

Furiously dedicated to the cause of freedom, Aung San Suu Kyi evokes with sensuality and vividness Burma's seasons and scenery, customs and festivities. She celebrates the courageous army officers, academics and actors who have supported the National League for Democracy, often at great personal risk; she describes the inspirational pilgrimage to the Buddhist abbot of Thamanya; and most of all she reveals with shocking frankness the impact of political decisions on the lives of ordinary people.