The River Of Lost Footsteps

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Burma is currently ruled by a harsh dictatorship unmoved by Western activists & sanctions It is also the sight of the longest-running conflict in the world Drawing both on his own family's stories & 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 & 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 & 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 & 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 & others he portrays Burma's rise & decline in the modern world from the time of Portuguese pirates & 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 & the emergence of Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi The River of Lost Footsteps is a work both personal & global a distinctive contribution that makes Burma accessible & enthralling Thant Myint-U is the author of Where China Meets India & has written articles for the New York Times the Washington Post & the New Statesman