BOOK REVIEW

RECOMMEND (232)

FACEBOOK

TWITTER

PLUSONE

MORE

E-MAIL

PRINT

TEXT SIZE

Watched over by Catholic guardian angels and Animist owl omens, Khoo Thwe survives, living on the Thai border with battle-hardened Karenni revolutionary troops and his own sadly naive "student soldier" comrades. Then he is "rescued"—whisked away to study at England’s Cambridge University, by a British professor he had met when back in Mandalay. I would caution against making too much of this rescue scenario. It is a fantasy all too common in Burma’s desperation, even among those who fight—that some Ingelei, some foreigner, will make it all right, will take you away or (even better) will take the regime away. It also plays into First World fantasies that in Third World struggles, the story is about the (usually white) person who will perform the rescue act. That might seem like what this book is about, but it is not. Khoo Thwe’s Cambridge education may be what enables him to put English words together so smoothly, but it is his life in Burma—bucolic, bohemian, brutal—that made him who he is, and gives us the compelling story he has to tell. This important book reminded me of the shameful lack of other such contemporary full-length memoirs by people from Burma (in English, at least). The last ones I can think of are revolutionary Aye Saung’s Burman in the Back Row and artist Aung Aung Thaike’s Visions of Shwedagon; both very good, but published in 1989. The stories of people from Burma emerge in collections of short pieces, in the survival narratives of human rights interviews like those of the Karen Human Rights Group, but not yet in books like this. And those stories are what we need to read now, what we need to know about. Readers from urban Burma, and from the wild mountains, can all find something of interest in this book, which may encourage discussion of their paths in life, their fate, and their decisions. Green Ghosts is also clearly expressed enough for readers utterly unfamiliar with Southeast Asia. There is never a false step as Khoo Thwe tells his life story, although I would have liked to see more care taken with the illustrations. A few chapters into Green Ghosts, it suddenly struck me that Khoo Thwe is a sort of real-life Harry Potter, raised among spells and enchantments; bundled off to this odd boarding school, threatened by evil and always curious in spirit; a brave boy raised to face overwhelming oppression with an ancient curse hurled back at it. In the end, British academic robes donned, Khoo Thwe faces Burma’s regime with this book of magic, a work of art and truth that he has conjured to defy it. Edith Mirante is the author of Burmese Looking Glass and runs Project Maje, a Burma information project.