Heroic, but hardly aloneThe Rebel of Rangoon: A Tale of Defiance and Deliverance in Burma. By Delphine Schrank. Nation Books; 312 pages; $26.99 and £17.99.
THE story of Myanmar’s astonishing political transformation since 2011 is usually told as a kind of top-down revolution. An army, having ruled the country brutally, ineptly and corruptly for half a century, decided to embrace change. The role of the opposition in this version of events tends to be described in terms of individual heroism: the patient, steadfast, impeccably moral stand of its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, through her long years of house arrest and confinement.
Delphine Schrank’s remarkable book is a reminder that this analysis is flawed in two ways. Miss Suu Kyi was the figurehead for a movement with deep roots in Burmese society, in which generations of heroes had risked their freedom and lives to defy and undermine military rule. Secondly, the 2011 decision by Miss Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), to rejoin politics and contest elections, was as big a concession as that made by the...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1Isq4rb
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