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Few countries warrant more pretrip reading than Myanmar.
In Andrew Marshall’s excellent The Trouser People: A Story of Burma in the Shadow of the Empire (2002), the British author retraces the steps of a gutsy Scot named Sir George Scott who traversed unmapped corners of British Burma in the late 1800s. Marshall compares the current day with Scott’s finds – much documented in Scott’s mammoth 1882 book The Burman – and finds that traditions have remained unchanged in the hills where ‘people are small and ghosts are big’.
From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey (2002), by Pascal Khoo Thwe, is a self-told tale of a reluctant rebel of the military regime who escaped – unlike many of his friends – out of Myanmar. Thwe grew up in a hill tribe in Shan State. His book hops between following telltale traditions and his increasing role in a changing Myanmar. There are many cultural traditions presented – including a recipe for smoked pigeons with marijuana sauce.
The definitive reading on Myanmar continues to be George Orwell’s sweat-stained Burmese Days (1934), which takes place amid the last gasp of the fading British colonial period in northern Burma. Well-timed earthquakes and riots, and overly poetic birthmarks, can be forgiven as the lead characters’ appreciation for the Burmese way of life seeps into the story of a gang of British brutes – some of whom are so stereotyped it’s hard to distinguish them from one another.
Amitav Ghosh’s super The Glass Palace (2001) faithfully recounts historical details (from King Thibaw’s fall in 1885 to the modern era) as experienced by a curious web of fictionalised families (Burmese, Indian, Chinese and American).
Daniel Mason’s The Piano Tuner (2002) follows a London tuner on a strange trip to tune a piano deep in the Shan hills. It’s similar to Heart of Darkness except that Kurtz has a piano (not necessarily a mind) out of whack. The story is good though, and descriptions of 19th-century sea voyages and Myanmar customs are spot on.
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