The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780374531164)

What do we really know about Burma and its history? And what can Burma's past tell us about its present and even its future? For nearly two decades Western governments and a growing activist community have been frustrated in their attempts to bring about a freer and more democratic Burma--through sanctions and tourist boycotts--only to see an apparent slide toward even harsher dictatorship.

Now Thant Myint-U tells the story of modern Burma, and the story of his own family, in an interwoven narrative that is by turns lyrical, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Through his prominent family's stories and those of others, he portrays Burma's rise and decline in the modern world, from the time of Portuguese pirates and renegade Mughal princes through a sixty-year civil war that continues today--the longest-running war anywhere in the world.

The River of Lost Footsteps is a work at once personal and global, a "brisk, vivid history" (Philip Delves Broughton, The Wall Street Journal) that makes Burma accessible and enthralling.

Author: Thant Myint-U
ISBN-10: 0374531161
ISBN-13: 9780374531164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Language: English
Published: 01/08/2008
Pages: 400
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.77lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.70w x 1.07d

Review Citation(s):
New York Review of Books 02/14/2008 pg. 36
New York Times Book Review 03/09/2008 pg. 28
New York Review of Books 06/05/2014 pg. 54