The seven books to read about Myanmar

Mint

08-05-2025

It has become steadily more difficult to find reasons to be hopeful about Myanmar. Elections in 2015 had seemed to usher in a new era of democracy, after years of authoritarian rule. Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the opposition National League of Democracy (NLD), became the de facto leader of the country formerly known as Burma. Yet attacks by the army on the Muslim Rohingya people, many of whom were killed or forced into exile, exposed the deadly intolerance of those in power. A military coup in February 2021 made things worse, provoking widespread violence. The economy looks wrecked; by World Bank estimates it is about 30% smaller than it might have been in the absence of covid-19 and the army's takeover. How to make sense of it all? These seven books go some way towards explaining a land of lamentations.
Picking Off New Shoots Will Not Stop the Spring. Edited by Ko Ko Thett and Brian Haman. Balestier Press; 264 pages; £11.99
It is too soon to expect any coherent account of the coup of February 1st 2021, and the awful events since. Ko Ko Thett, a Myanmar poet, and Brian Haman, an academic, have produced the next best thing, a volume of what they call 'witness poems and essays". These are first-hand, often visceral, accounts of the many anti-coup demonstrations that rocked the country last year, and the consequent military repression; the shootings, beatings, arrests and torture. 'The landscape is bloody-fucked," writes one contributor. The last works of two poets who lost their lives in the anti-coup protests are recorded here.
The Lady and the Generals: Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's struggle for freedom. By Peter Popham. Rider; 496 pages; £14.99
The slight, elegant figure of Aung San Suu Kyi has dominated the politics of Myanmar for more than three decades, even though she has been locked up by military governments for much of that time. The most readable biography of her is by Peter Popham, a British journalist. His first edition, 'The Lady and the Peacock", chronicled her life up to her release from house arrest in 2010; this second edition takes the story up to her landslide election victory in 2015, after which the NLD formed a government. 'The Lady and the Generals" captures the spirit of optimism that prevailed until the 2015 elections; long-lasting sanctions were lifted, Western aid poured into Myanmar and Ms Suu Kyi toured the world in triumph. We reviewed this book in 2016.
Myanmar's Rohingya Genocide: Identity, History and Hate Speech. By Ronan Lee. 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. As de facto leader of the country, she even appeared at the International Court of Justice to defend the behaviour of the troops. Ronan Lee has written the most reliable and up-to-date account of the cruelty and discrimination endured by the Rohingya over many years in Myanmar. He shows how the army weaponised religion and ethnicity to cling to power. Ms Suu Kyi gets a gentle roasting too.
The River of Lost Footsteps. By Thant Myint-U. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 384 pages; $19. Faber & Faber; £10.99
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. Thant Myint-U is a trained historian and the most helpful part of the book is his fluent narrative of the formation of the Burmese state from ancient times through to the early 19th century when the Court of Ava at Mandalay was one of the most dominant in South-East Asia. Thereafter, however, conflict with the rival empire of British India proved Burma's downfall. The author is particularly good at showing how the old patterns of monarchical rule were sundered by colonialism.
The Glass Palace. By Amitav Ghosh. The Borough Press; 560 pages; £9.99
For a more imaginative take on the destruction of Burma's ancient monarchy, read 'The Glass Palace" 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 (and last) 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. It is a mini-epic, courageously sweeping through time and place, sometimes funny, often poignant and always wise.
Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia. By Michael Vatikiotis. Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 336 pages; £20
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 the Far Eastern Economic Review and 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. In Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and elsewhere progress towards democracy ebbs (mostly) and flows. Mr Vatikiotis shows how Myanmar might be judged by regional standards rather than what can seem like impossibly remote Western values. We reviewed this book in 2017.
Being and Becoming Kachin. Mandy Sadan. Oxford University Press, 470 pages; £100
This is the only recent, high-quality account of one of the numerous ethnic groups, in this case the Kachin, that live on the geographical fringes of Myanmar. The outside world usually focuses on the struggle for democracy between Ms Suu Kyi and the generals, but Ms Sadan's rigorously researched book brings a reminder that ever since independence the country has seen almost continuous internal conflict between the majority ethnic Burman people, or Bamar, and minorities such as the Kachin and Chin.
Our former correspondent wrote his own book, in 2015, on the subject:
Blood, Dreams and Gold: The Changing Face of Burma. By Richard Cockett. Yale University Press, 296 pages; $35 and £18.99
How Burma, once one of the richest countries in the region, descended into decades of civil war and authoritarian government before embarking on a surprising attempt at political and social reform. The book gathers together diverse strands of the country's past—from drugs to warlords, Islam to illegal logging—to consider its pathologies.
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