The River of Lost Footsteps
Feb 2011 · Faber & Faber
4.3star
7 reviewsreport
Ebook
755
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
About this ebook
Burma is currently ruled by a harsh dictatorship unmoved by Western activists and sanctions. It is also the sight of the longest-running conflict in the world. Drawing both on his own family's stories and his years of hands-on political experience working with the United Nations, Thant Myint-U has written an illuminating account of how Burma's rich past informs its violent present, and of how the world might transform the country's future. In The River of Lost Footsteps, Thant Myint-U 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, a sixty-year civil war that continues today, military repression and the immergence of Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.The River of Lost Footsteps is a work both personal and global, a distinctive contribution that makes Burma accessible and enthralling. Thant Myint-U is the author of Where China Meets India and has written articles for the New York Times, the Washington Post and the New Statesman.
Ratings and reviews
4.3
7 reviews
Sujit Dasgupta
- Flag inappropriate
September 7, 2017
An excellent book on history of not only Burma but almost the entire world particularly during the 18-20 century. Very thought provoking analyses on contemporary geopolitical scenario vis-a-vis Burma. I personally missed some episodes during WWII when there could have been a reference of Subhas C. Bose. Period of British occupation of Burma was possibly too little for its complete integration in comparison to India, and that made a huge difference when they left both the countries in the late forties. I visited Burma in 2011; went by boat from Homolin to Tazon along the Chindwin River- a beautiful country.
About the author
Thant Myint-U was educated at Harvard and Cambridge and was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1995 to 1999. He has also served on United Nations peacekeeping operations, in Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia, and was more recently the head of policy planning in the UN's Department of Political Affairs where Kofi Annan was the Secretary-General. He is the author of The River of Lost Footsteps and Where China Meets India and currently works as a special consultant to the Burmese government.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
