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The Lady And The Peacock
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Review
"Sensitive and moving"--Jon Swain, Sunday Times
"Highly readable...a fresh approach"--Evening Standard
"A portrait both warm and objective... it will not be bettered for a long time"--Independent on Sunday
"An impressive achievement"--Herald Scotland
"Accessible and impeccably researched...a poignant account of Suu Kyi’s life and her efforts to establish democracy in Burma"--The Independent
"Masterly... superb"--Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"The most comprehensive, accessible, honest and fair biography of Aung San Suu Kyi to date, blowing away all previous efforts."--Benedict Rogers, author of Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant
"The definitive and superbly written account of one of the most intriguing and admirable political and moral figures of our times."--Pankaj Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire
"Highly readable...a fresh approach"--Evening Standard
"A portrait both warm and objective... it will not be bettered for a long time"--Independent on Sunday
"An impressive achievement"--Herald Scotland
"Accessible and impeccably researched...a poignant account of Suu Kyi’s life and her efforts to establish democracy in Burma"--The Independent
"Masterly... superb"--Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"The most comprehensive, accessible, honest and fair biography of Aung San Suu Kyi to date, blowing away all previous efforts."--Benedict Rogers, author of Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant
"The definitive and superbly written account of one of the most intriguing and admirable political and moral figures of our times."--Pankaj Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire
Book Description
The definitive biography of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's pro-democracy leader, now the subject of Luc Besson's film, 'The Lady'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Aung San Suu Kyi was elected by a clear majority of the Burmese people to rule her country. The daughter of an enduring Burmese hero, she felt a duty to serve those people, but more than 20 years on she has yet to assume power.
Instead, a succession of self-serving military leaders have ruled Burma illegitimately while keeping ASSK under house arrest for most of those two decades. She could have left the country, but understood that if she did, she would never be allowed back. Staying in her prison was the only way in which she could serve those who continued to idolise her, but this meant sacrificing not only her freedom but her family.
Recently, the military junta has staged phoney elections. It has freed ASSK and a small proportion of its political prisoners in an effort to persuade the world that it has changed its spots. Tired of being a pariah state, its resources have been squandered and it knows there are those outside keen to engage with (and make money from) Burma given the right pretext.
Aung San Suu Kyi has to decide how to play this difficult situation, and it's at this pivotal point that what is by far the best book to date about this fascinating Nobel Peace Prize-winner has been published. I have yawned through worthy but dry biographies of the Lady in the past, but this one just kept me turning the pages. For the first time she emerges as a rounded, flesh-and-blood personality, rather than the remote, almost inexplicable ice goddess depicted before.
This process is certainly helped by Peter Popham's access to the vivid campaign-trail diaries of ASSK's former assistant Ma Thengi, but that's only part of it. Instead of sticking to a laborious chronological account of her life, the author explores those areas most likely to illuminate his subject's motives, philosophies, strategies and emotions. His style is journalistic and understated, and by the end of the book we feel not only that we know ASSK better than before, but that we have been given clues as to how she might approach future challenges.
What is clear from The Lady And The Peacock is that after all Aung San Suu Kyi has been through, she won't quit the stage without wresting from the generals as much benefit for the Burmese people as she humanly can. If you read only one book about Burma, read this one.
Instead, a succession of self-serving military leaders have ruled Burma illegitimately while keeping ASSK under house arrest for most of those two decades. She could have left the country, but understood that if she did, she would never be allowed back. Staying in her prison was the only way in which she could serve those who continued to idolise her, but this meant sacrificing not only her freedom but her family.
Recently, the military junta has staged phoney elections. It has freed ASSK and a small proportion of its political prisoners in an effort to persuade the world that it has changed its spots. Tired of being a pariah state, its resources have been squandered and it knows there are those outside keen to engage with (and make money from) Burma given the right pretext.
Aung San Suu Kyi has to decide how to play this difficult situation, and it's at this pivotal point that what is by far the best book to date about this fascinating Nobel Peace Prize-winner has been published. I have yawned through worthy but dry biographies of the Lady in the past, but this one just kept me turning the pages. For the first time she emerges as a rounded, flesh-and-blood personality, rather than the remote, almost inexplicable ice goddess depicted before.
This process is certainly helped by Peter Popham's access to the vivid campaign-trail diaries of ASSK's former assistant Ma Thengi, but that's only part of it. Instead of sticking to a laborious chronological account of her life, the author explores those areas most likely to illuminate his subject's motives, philosophies, strategies and emotions. His style is journalistic and understated, and by the end of the book we feel not only that we know ASSK better than before, but that we have been given clues as to how she might approach future challenges.
What is clear from The Lady And The Peacock is that after all Aung San Suu Kyi has been through, she won't quit the stage without wresting from the generals as much benefit for the Burmese people as she humanly can. If you read only one book about Burma, read this one.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Popham's biography of Aung San Suu Kyi is a piece of well-written and carefully crafted research with interviews from the people around her who not only understand her actions, but many of the reasons behind them. These interviews help this biography steal a march on countless predecessors, which - whilst historically and factually accurate - are often anaemic without this human touch.
As always, Suu herself remains forever enigmatic, but that is part of the challenge faced for every biographer. Popham uses his extensive interviews to shed light on the woman trapped within the icon.
I found that some of the details that the author reveals of her earlier "solid and safe and decent" life in Oxford quaintly endearing - when her dreams, whilst doing the washing up, stretched no further than the creditable ambition of launching a chain of public libraries across Burma.
Much has changed in Suu's life since that time, but Popham helps us make sense of it on a much more personal level, which is high praise indeed for any biography on this remarkable lady's life.
As always, Suu herself remains forever enigmatic, but that is part of the challenge faced for every biographer. Popham uses his extensive interviews to shed light on the woman trapped within the icon.
I found that some of the details that the author reveals of her earlier "solid and safe and decent" life in Oxford quaintly endearing - when her dreams, whilst doing the washing up, stretched no further than the creditable ambition of launching a chain of public libraries across Burma.
Much has changed in Suu's life since that time, but Popham helps us make sense of it on a much more personal level, which is high praise indeed for any biography on this remarkable lady's life.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Three major biographies were published in the last quarter of 2011 - "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson, "Deng Xiaoping" by Ezra Vogel, and "The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi". The first concerns a man who delivered access to knowledge as well as nonsense into the palms of virtually everyone on earth. The second transformed a giant country of peasants into savvy businessmen who now owns assets beyond the Great Wall. Who would have imagined during the years of Mao Tze Tung that "Volvo" would have become a Chinese owned company? Against these two massive figures in history, where can one fit the slim, demure woman from Burma?
For someone who spent 15 out of 21 years under detention of one sort or another during the modern era of Burma (an ironic term as we shall see) from 1989 to 2010, there would have been little to write about. As Popham himself wrote, "Aung San Suu Kyi's life tends to be described in a one-dimensional manner, as the story of a courageous woman who challenged a military junta and lost." Furthermore, she was often criticized as a woman who forsook her family for politics, and for running a political fight with no political acumen. She has been perceived as an obstinate person whose intransigence let her followers down. She who, in the 1990 elections found that she had almost the entire nation behind her and yet could not oust the small, bullying, corrupt military Junta. It was the kind of elections the Junta had hoped, in the words of Samir Amin, "to change everything so that nothing changes".
Popham tries to show in this book that the life of Aung San Suu Kyi is much more complex and instructive than the superficial understanding the uninformed might have of her. She had a fiery hero for a father and a calm, stoic woman for a mother, but her own character was very different. She was intelligent but not, by her own admission, as intellectually inclined as her father Aung San though she loved reading. A devout Buddhist she is a teetotaler but was prepared to experiment when she was a student in Oxford just to understand what it is in alcohol that has its allure for so many. She was brought up in a genteel life as a child and in her youth, but that life gradually turned into one that is inextricably wound up with the history of Burma and the fate of her nation. Burma cannot compare with the billions in China but its near 60 million people is a sizeable chunk of South-East Asia.
Writing in a tone and pace that exemplifies the nature and character of the subject, Popham ensures that the heroic feats, though not many, were inserted appropriately in his way of building the image of Aung San Suu Kyi. She walked through a barrage of rifle fire, refusing to walk by the side of the road as commanded by the Junta's soldiers. That incident created, an image, in her people's eyes, as a leader blessed by the gods. She survived an assasination in 2002. She lives and today embodies the continued hope of her nation. In many ways she was much more handicapped than Steve Jobs and Deng Xiaoping so her efforts must be considered in that light. Professor Francis Sejersted, the chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee said in the presentation ceremony in 1991 (she was in detention in Burma) that "The great work we are acknowledging has yet to be concluded."
For someone who spent 15 out of 21 years under detention of one sort or another during the modern era of Burma (an ironic term as we shall see) from 1989 to 2010, there would have been little to write about. As Popham himself wrote, "Aung San Suu Kyi's life tends to be described in a one-dimensional manner, as the story of a courageous woman who challenged a military junta and lost." Furthermore, she was often criticized as a woman who forsook her family for politics, and for running a political fight with no political acumen. She has been perceived as an obstinate person whose intransigence let her followers down. She who, in the 1990 elections found that she had almost the entire nation behind her and yet could not oust the small, bullying, corrupt military Junta. It was the kind of elections the Junta had hoped, in the words of Samir Amin, "to change everything so that nothing changes".
Popham tries to show in this book that the life of Aung San Suu Kyi is much more complex and instructive than the superficial understanding the uninformed might have of her. She had a fiery hero for a father and a calm, stoic woman for a mother, but her own character was very different. She was intelligent but not, by her own admission, as intellectually inclined as her father Aung San though she loved reading. A devout Buddhist she is a teetotaler but was prepared to experiment when she was a student in Oxford just to understand what it is in alcohol that has its allure for so many. She was brought up in a genteel life as a child and in her youth, but that life gradually turned into one that is inextricably wound up with the history of Burma and the fate of her nation. Burma cannot compare with the billions in China but its near 60 million people is a sizeable chunk of South-East Asia.
Writing in a tone and pace that exemplifies the nature and character of the subject, Popham ensures that the heroic feats, though not many, were inserted appropriately in his way of building the image of Aung San Suu Kyi. She walked through a barrage of rifle fire, refusing to walk by the side of the road as commanded by the Junta's soldiers. That incident created, an image, in her people's eyes, as a leader blessed by the gods. She survived an assasination in 2002. She lives and today embodies the continued hope of her nation. In many ways she was much more handicapped than Steve Jobs and Deng Xiaoping so her efforts must be considered in that light. Professor Francis Sejersted, the chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee said in the presentation ceremony in 1991 (she was in detention in Burma) that "The great work we are acknowledging has yet to be concluded."
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Excellent
Too many biographies are learned, informative but heavy. This is very readable and provides a fascinating insight into the life of an iconic lady - one who the whole world wishes... Read more
Published 1 month ago by P. Forsyth
Half history of Burma, half biography
This is a respectable biography, though there's a certain distance...
I'd use the analogy of a tv, or film, in that what we get here is mostly in long shot, showing her... Read more
I'd use the analogy of a tv, or film, in that what we get here is mostly in long shot, showing her... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Zeddy12
Too creative
I have read half the book so far and wonder if I want to continue.
Popham's description of Aung San Suu Kyi's time in England (Oxford and London) features far more... Read more
Popham's description of Aung San Suu Kyi's time in England (Oxford and London) features far more... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Mrs. RM KLEPPMANN
a masterpiece
This is the most insightful work about Suu Kyi that I have seen. Peter Popham shows a unique understanding of the role of the the Lady in the modern world as a whole. Read it!
Published 2 months ago by stuglet
Interesting and informative, though sadly laborious at times
I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to people who have an interest in Burma or in non violent struggle. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Mr. Thomas Johnston
A Stunning Achievement
SPELLBOUND! There is no other word to describe how I felt reading this remarkable book.It is a page-turner, so cleverly constructed, with poetic imagery ( shriekingly green and... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Thomas G. P. Rogers
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