From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey [Hardcover]

I could not replace this book on my shelf without recommending it to others. I haven't felt so sorry to finish the last page of a book in a long time.

Pascal Khoo Thwe is a determined, unpretentious but resilient man. He was born into a tribal family in a remote part of Burma. His university education in Mandalay is cut short when he is forced to leave his studies and his family, having spoken out against the corrupt military dictatorship. He manages to survive life in the jungle as a guerrilla fighter.

His life changes dramatically when he meets Dr. John Casey, a Cambridge don. Casey is intrigued by Pascal Khoo Thwe's enduring interest in English literature and arranges for him to study at Cambridge university.

I had expected to hear more about his time at Cambridge (it takes up about 10% of the book) but I now feel that the author got the balance right.

It is a humbling, shocking, eye-opening, but ultimately uplifting book which will stay with me for a long time.

In March 1988 Dr John Casey, a Cambridge lecturer visiting Burma en route to Kyoto, was informed of a waiter at a Chinese restaurant in Mandalay who had expressed a fondness for James Joyce. Intrigued, Casey sought out this anomalous character, who proceeded to take the errant academic on a tour of Mandalay University campus, where he was studying English Literature. Within six months that waiter would be forced out of university after its closure, becoming a political agitator and then a refugee in the Burmese jungle, fleeing for his life from the forces of the infamous military regime. While entrenched in the rebel camps he sent an inquisitive letter to John Casey, who set about evacuating him from Burma and later securing him a place at Cambridge University. From The Land of Green Ghosts is his autobiography.
The three sections of the book deal respectively with the three main epochs of Pascal Khoo Thwe’s life up to his graduation from Cambridge in 1995. Beginning with his Edenic upbringing among a Paduang tribe, a sort of ‘Paradise Lost’ since the departure of the British and the rise of military incursions into the tribal heartlands, he later tells of his initial vocation to be a priest, and then his enrolment at Mandalay University, where in the dirty, hot and unclean metropolis he feels ‘tiny and insignificant for the first time in my life’. Very soon the political situation in Mandalay approaches breaking point, as the government twice demonetises the national currency, leaving many destitute. When the students begin to organise protests, the military respond savagely, and many civilians are either gunned down or disappear. When Pascal returns to his homeland he has become politically energised by the injustices he has witnessed, and tries to drum up anti-government sentiment, before he is soon forced to flee to the relative safety of the rebel camps near the Thai border. The last part of the book recounts his miraculous escape, and initial cultural alienation in England as he struggles to undertake a degree in his third language, all the time aware that his friends remain in the Burmese jungle, valiantly fighting against hopeless odds for some notion of freedom.
If this sounds like the plot of a fictional novel, it also reads like one; there were times when I was forced to remind myself that all the events recalled in such detail by the author are based on actual experience. Thwe is a very humble narrator, but also paints vivid pictures in the mind: he does not just recount what you would see, but also recreates smells, noises, the atmosphere of the seasons. His description of life among the Paduang reads something like an anthropological monograph written by one of the subjects, giving us an insider’s view into the meaning behind the numerous rituals, customs and beliefs – especially concerning ghosts, who form an important part of the Paduang cultural psyche (the ‘green’ ghosts of the title are believed to rise from those murdered or killed in an accident: they are the fiercest and consequently the most feared). At times deeply tragic, but always uplifting, Thwe has justified his flight from the wings of the resistance, since he has kept his promise and not forgotten those who stayed to continue the fight; and hopefully, with the publication of this book, he has made an international audience more aware of the human rights abuses associated with the Burmese ‘socialist’ regime, and more dedicated to their deposition.

My only disappointment with this book was that I got to the end! An amazing (unique?)story of courage, resiliance, tragedy and ultimately personal triumph. A recommended read for anyone over the age of sixteen. One of those books you will remember for a very long time (and may even change your life........)