From the Land of Green Ghosts by Pascal Khoo Thwe

When government tried to counter inflation by declaring most units of currency worthless, Burma was plunged into a dreadful financial situation.

“To me, Mandalay (a place which, as I later learned, foreign visitors enjoyed as a sleeply backwater that time forgot) was an amazing metropolis,” he writes. In 1984, age seventeen, he set out on the 375-mile trip to Mandalay, an immense journey in every way. A useful and succinct history of Burma follows, enhanced by an evocation of some major rituals and stories of his tribe and a luminous description of village life replete with buffaloes, shamanism, soccer matches, and waking up to Paul Anka and the Beatles on the radio.Īt thirteen, the author headed off to seminary, but decided he wasn’t cut out for the priesthood and determined to go to University instead. The book opens with the author’s description of his family background and daily life growing up as a member of the Kayan (Paudaung) tribe in a town located in the Shan State. One of the things this book bring home with astonishing power is the way that these interactions can turn out to be a lifeline when situations deteriorate, and how they create bonds and webs of responsibilities and possibilities across borders patrolled by even the most ruthless governments. For anyone who has traveled as a tourist, on business, or on a human rights mission, this kind of chance encounter is familiar.

It turns out that the waiter has read little Joyce, but, in Casey’s words, “did seem to understand the humor and the irony of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”Īfter the meal, the waiter, Pascal Khoo Thwe, takes Casey back to his university and introduces him to friends there. On a visit to Burma, Casey hears about a waiter in a Chinese restaurant in Mandalay who loves James Joyce.

The book begins with a foreword by a Cambridge don, John Casey, who is to play a significant role in the story. Pascal Khoo Thwe’s memoir From the Land of the Green Ghosts is remarkable for many reasons, but what makes it of particular interest to Human Rights Watch is its description of the human rights catastrophe in Burma and its moving chronicle of the author’s route to becoming a human rights activist. Will Schwalbe reviews Pascal Khoo Thwe's From the Land of the Green Ghosts.

From the Land of Green Ghosts by Pascal Khoo Thwe