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From the Land of Green Ghosts
Pascal Khoo Thwe
Memoir, 2002
Memoir of growing up in a Kayan hill community in the Shan State, then living under military rule and reaching Cambridge.
Books set in Myanmar
Six books by writers from Myanmar, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with From the Land of Green Ghosts and Smile as They Bow.
About the literature of Myanmar
Myanmar's written literature grew up in Buddhist monasteries. Its modern writers have worked through British rule, independence in 1948 and, from Ne Win's coup in 1962, decades of military government and censorship. Little Burmese fiction has been translated, so many books in English are memoirs by people who later lived abroad, including writers from the Karen and Kayan minorities. Start with Pascal Khoo Thwe's From the Land of Green Ghosts, which traces his path from a Kayan hill community in the Shan State to Cambridge.
Nu Nu Yi's Smile as They Bow, translated from Burmese, sets nat worship (the veneration of spirits) and village life at the Taungbyone festival. Ma Ma Lay's Not Out of Hate follows a young village woman married to an older, Westernised Burmese trader, as a quiet allegory of colonial rule.
By writers from Myanmar
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Smile as They Bow
Nu Nu Yi
Novel, 1994. Translated from Burmese by Alfred Birnbaum
A novel set during the Taungbyone spirit-medium festival near Mandalay, showing nat worship, village life and a flamboyant, vivid side of Burmese culture.
Not Out of Hate
Ma Ma Lay
Novel, 1955. Translated from Burmese by Margaret Aung-Thwin
A seventeen-year-old village woman marries an older, Westernised Burmese agent for a British firm, whose stifling love becomes an allegory of colonial rule.
Golden Parasol: A Daughter's Memoir of Burma
Wendy Law-Yone
Memoir, 2013
Memoir of growing up in Rangoon with her father, an opposition newspaper editor, during the coup and the repression of Ne Win's rule.
Little Daughter: A Memoir of Survival in Burma and the West
Zoya Phan
Memoir, 2009
A Karen woman's account of her childhood in a village in eastern Burma, displacement by the army, and life in refugee camps on the border.
Burmese Family
Mi Mi Khaing
Memoir, 1946
Memoir of middle-class family life in prewar Burma, covering customs, festivals, food and the domestic world of a Burmese household.
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