The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma (82 page)
Read The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma Online
Authors: Thant Myint-U
My great-grandparents on my father’s side, both children of court officials, after the fall of the kingdom.
My maternal grandfather, U Thant, at Rangoon University in 1927.
General Aung San in London for talks with Clement Attlee’s government in 1947. (© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS)
Burma’s first post-independence prime minister, U Nu, in 1948. (© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS)
Army chief General Ne Win (far left) and Burmese diplomats at the War Office in London in 1948. (© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS)
Aung San Suu Kyi (right) with my mother, Aye Aye Thant, at a party at our house in New York in 1970.
Burmese troops parading past the statues of long-dead kings in 2006. (AFP/Getty Images)
About the Author
Thant Myint-U was a senior officer in the executive office of the United Nations Secretary General. He has worked for UN peacekeeping operations in Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia. He was educated at Harvard and at Trintiy College, Cambridge, where he was subsequently made a Fellow.
He is the author of
The Making of Modern Burma,
and
The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma
.
Copyright
This ebook edition published in 2010
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© Thant Myint-U, 2007
The right of Thant Myint-U to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–26606–7
Table of Contents
FOUR: PIRATES AND PRINCES ALONG THE BAY OF BENGAL
FIVE: THE CONSEQUENCES OF PATRIOTISM