True Love and Bartholomew: Rebels on the Burmese Border - Hardcover

Falla, Jonathan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521390192 ISBN 13: 9780521390194

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1991

Synopsis

The Karen, one of Burma's many minority peoples, have been waging an increasingly desperate war for autonomy against the Burmese government since 1949. Karen society in Burma has been little studied since the 1920s, and recent writers have been forced (by Burma's "closed door" policies) to concentrate on Karen refugee communities in Thailand. This book is a portrait of an ancient culture remolded to the purposes of ethnic rebellion. The picture is enriched with historical comparisons and is based on portraits of individual Karen as they struggle to defend their way of life and to preserve their belief in their own independence. There are chapters on music, food, love, the patterns of the rebels' forest and river life, on the Karen military hierarchy and its weaponry, on women and on mercenaries, on the language and the symbols of rebel nationalism. Jonathan Falla has led a diverse life. He attended the University of Cambridge and is the founder of the Cambridge Poetry Society. He has worked in Indonesia and Uganda and has written several plays, being named one of Britain's Most Promising Playwrights in 1983. Falla spent an illegal year in Burma living with the Karen rebels. Currently, he lives in Scotland and works as a nurse.

About this title

Book Description

The Karen, one of Burma's many minority peoples, have been waging an increasingly desperate war for autonomy against the Burmese government since 1949. Jonathan Falla, a nurse and prizewinning playwright, spent an illegal year in Burma with the Karen rebels.

From Library Journal

Scattered around the globe are minority groups who have refused incorporation into newly independent Third World nations. Burma (now Myanmar) has several such groups, and Falla devotes his attention to the Karen, who have fought the Burmese since 1948. His account is not the typical flamboyant narrative of the innocent minority ruthlessly persecuted by the majority. Rather, he edited his 1986-87 diary describing his illegal stay in a Karen village (Burma is closed to outsiders). While impartially discussing the Karen's strengths, weaknesses, and perceptions of the future, he also includes the comments of others who over the last two centuries also interacted with the Karen. Falla leaves the reader with the impression that the Karen, like everyone else, are pushed and pulled by outside forces and somehow have to come to terms with this reality. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't. For Asian collections.
- Donald Clay Johnson, Univ. of Minnesota Lib., Minneapolis
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0521390192
• ISBN 13: 9780521390194
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 426