CULTURE

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The readers got fed up with this genre and it was finished in the 1980s.”

 

 

At the same time, some leftist writers began to take note of the ideological shift in the world. Win Tin, the veteran journalist who is now in prison, and Maung Sue San, a well known leftist writer, were the first to embrace global trends that departed from Burma’s principal literary ideologies of communism and capitalism.

 

“Two grand ideas dominated Burmese literature until 1988. These were communism and capitalism—or Leftism and Rightism. Now both have gone,” said Nyein Wai, an exiled writer and poet who has published books outside Burma. “What is dominant now is pluralism, which the great poet Dagon Taryar has often mentioned.’’

 

The 1988 uprising consigned socialist realism, together with the so-called Burmese socialists, to the history books. Before 1988, influential writers thought that literature must be guided by politics. Now they sensed freedom.

 

“It all changed,” Nyein Wai said. “Literature is literature. Politics is politics. Literature does not need to rely o­n politics. We are now convinced that each stands o­n its own feet.”

 

A former leftist poet, who asked not to be named, also said he no longer had any political burden o­n his shoulders.

 

In the two years following the 1988 uprising, the Berlin Wall collapsed, the Soviet Union fell apart and the Cold War came to an end. The political map of the world was no longer bipolar. Maung Sue San said that this period marked the advent of what he was the first to call the “post-communist era,” and so a new page of Burmese literature had been turned.

 

The first new genre that surfaced after 1988 was the so-called “success book.” o­ne author of several such works said: “Under the socialist government, we didn’t need much money because there weren’t many things in the market. Now we are more willing to become rich as we have a lot of things to enjoy. This is a reason why our people like to read success books these days.”

 

The military regime that took control of Ne Win’s socialist government in 1988 introduced an open market policy. Private companies appeared and modern commodities rolled in from abroad. Making money became the talk of the town. No wonder, then, that the “rags-to-riches” genre superseded all others.

 

Ludu Sein Win, a veteran journalist, noted that nearly all “success books” were translated into Burmese from English, and so were not entirely suitable for a Burmese audience. “How can a Burmese become a millionaire without modern day business involving stocks and shares?” he asked.