Purchase

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Books-A-Million

Indie BookShop

Add to Wish List

Also by Thant Myint-U:

Where China Meets India, September 2011
Hardcover / e-Book
The River of Lost Footsteps, October 2006
Hardcover

THE RIVER OF LOST FOOTSTEPS
By: Thant Myint-U

Histories of Burma

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
October 2006
On Sale: October 12, 2006
384 pages
ISBN: 0374163421
EAN: 9780374163426
Hardcover
Add to Wish List

Non-Fiction History

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. But what do we really know about Burma and its history? And what can Burma’s past tell us about the present and even its future?

In The River of Lost Footsteps, Thant Myint-U tells the story of modern Burma, in part through a telling of his own family’s history, in an interwoven narrative that is by turns lyrical, dramatic, and appalling. His maternal grandfather, U Thant, rose from being the schoolmaster of a small town in the Irrawaddy Delta to become the UN secretary-general in the 1960s. And on his father’s side, the author is descended from a long line of courtiers who served at Burma’s Court of Ava for nearly two centuries. Through their stories and others, he portrays Burma’s rise and decline in the modern world, from the time of Portuguese pirates and renegade Mughal princes through the decades of British colonialism, the devastation of World War II, and a sixty-year civil war that continues today and is the longest-running war anywhere in the world.

The River of Lost Footsteps is a work both personal and global, a distinctive contribution that makes Burma accessible and enthralling.

Media Buzz

Diane Rehm Show - NPR - January 17, 2007
Fresh Air - NPR - January 16, 2007