POLITICIAN * PRISONER * PARENT A portrait of one of the most charismatic, but unknown, world leaders Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and crusader for democracy in Myanmar, is once again behind bars. Her resounding victory at the polls, and re-election to office as civilian head of state, were overturned by the February 2021 military coup - a move with ruinous consequences. Aung San Suu Kyi has been here before. The first half of her political career was spent under house arrest. But this time she has been disappeared into prison in Naypyidaw, following an array of charges clearly calculated to keep her out of politics and out of sight for the rest of her life. This time she is caught in a zero-sum game. Once deified by the international community for her advocacy of democracy and human rights, yet later vilified for her denial of the Burmese military's genocidal campaign against the Rohingya, Aung San Suu Kyi's image survives largely untarnished within Myanmar. Her supporters refer to her as 'Amay Suu' (Mother Suu). Heir to the political and spiritual legacy of her father, General Aung San, independence hero and martyr, she remains the lodestar of nationalist aspirations, and matriarch for a nation in distress. This book tracks Aung San Suu Kyi's transformation from daughter of a national hero to materfamilias of Myanmar, placing her firmly within the context of the Burmese Buddhist notions of nationhood and motherhood and explaining her continuing role as the figurehead of the nation's struggles. The result is a unique portrait of a living legend, rendered by a compatriot and contemporary, the novelist Wendy Law-Yone. POLITICIAN Decades spent spearheading the fight for democracy in Myanmar - following her father Aung San's legacy as founder of the modern Burmese nation. PRISONER Having already spent half her political career under house arrest, in December 2022, Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced to 33 years in prison. PARENT To her exiled family and a nation.

Aung San Suu Kyi: Politician, Prisoner, Parent

Biographies & Memoirs

Law-Yone, Wendy

Historical

TLS Books

‘Die, and it’s the vile earth; live, and it’s the golden parasol,’ went the old Burmese saying. Why not aim for the pinnacle with everything they had? The vile earth would be theirs soon enough. A year after Burma’s military coup in 1962, Ed Law-Yone, daredevil proprietor of the influential newspaper, The Nation, was arrested and his newspaper shut down. Eventually, his teenaged daughter Wendy was also imprisoned before managing to escape the country. Ed spent five years as a political prisoner, but the moment he was freed he set about trying – unsuccessfully – to stage a revolution, and never gave up hope for the restoration of democracy in Burma. Exiled in America, he died disappointed – though not before entrusting to his daughter Wendy his papers and unpublished memoirs: of a career that had spanned the full sweep of modern Burmese history – from colonial rule to independence; from the era of parliamentary democracy to the military coup that would usher in decades of totalitarian rule. Now, some forty years later, as Burma enters another period of transition, Wendy Law-Yone has honoured her father’s legacy by setting his remarkable career in a larger, more personal, story. The result is Golden Parasol, a unique portrait of a patriot, his family, and a nation whose vicissitudescontinue to intrigue the world.

Golden Parasol: A Daughter’s Memoir of Burma

Community & Culture

Vintage

The Coffin Tree

Literature & Fiction

Vintage/Ebury (A Division of Random House Group)

Wendy Law-Yone was just fifteen when Burma's military staged a coup and overthrew the civilian government in 1962. The daughter of Ed Law-Yone, the daredevil founder and chief editor of The Nation, Burma's leading postwar English-language newspaper, she experienced firsthand the perils and promises of a newly independent Burma. On the eve of Wendy's studies abroad, Ed Law-Yone was arrested and The Nation shut down. Wendy herself was briefly imprisoned. After his release, Ed fled to Thailand with his family, where he formed a government-in-exile and tried, unsuccessfully, to foment a revolution. Exiled to America with his wife and children, Ed never gave up hope that Burma would one day adopt a new democratic government. Though he died disappointed, he left in his daughter's care an illuminating trove of papers documenting the experiences of an eccentric, ambitious, humorous, and determined patriot, vividly recounting the realities of colonial rule, Japanese occupation, postwar reconstruction, and military dictatorship. This memoir tells the twin histories of Law-Yone's kin and his country, a nation whose vicissitudes continue to intrigue the world.

A Daughter's Memoir of Burma

Columbia University Press

Wendy Law-Yone opens her first novel with the phrase of a survivor, "Living things prefer to go on living." A young woman and her older half-brother are expelled from their home in Burma by a savage political coup. Sent to elusive safety in America, the motherless siblings find themselves engulfed by the indifference, hypocrisy, and cruelty of an American society unable to deal with difference. Her brother's death drives the unnamed narrator into the seclusion of a mental hospital, where memories of her childhood and the strength it ingrained in her are enough to heal her heart and return her to the outside world.

Alfred.A. Knopf

In a novel that spans five decades, a tango-dancing Asian beauty rises from her close-knit village life and impulsively marries a powerful military man, who will become her country's dictator. 12,500 first printing.

Irrawaddy Tango

Random House Value Publishing

In a novel that spans five decades, a tango-dancing Asian beauty rises from her close-knit village life and impulsively marries a powerful military man, who will become her country's dictator. 12,500 first printing.

United States

Golden Parasol

Leaders & Notable People

Chatto&Windus

A young, well-born Burmese woman and her mentally unstable older brother find themselves in New York City, where desperation and hysteria hound them and where the heroine-narrator must learn to survive

The Coffin Tree: A Novel (Asian Voices)

Literary

Beacon Pr

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Law-Yone, Wendy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Law-Yone, Wendy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Law-Yone, Wendy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Aung San Suu Kyi: Politician, Prisoner, Parent

Golden Parasol: A Daughter’s Memoir of Burma

The Coffin Tree

A Daughter's Memoir of Burma

A Daughter's Memoir of Burma

The Coffin Tree

Irrawaddy Tango

Irrawaddy Tango

Golden Parasol

The Coffin Tree: A Novel (Asian Voices)