Customer Reviews

The Iron Road: A Stand for Truth and Democracy in Burma

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I first heard of James Mawdsley when he was interviewed on the program Worldview on NPR.Even though I had only read one book in the last year and a half previous to hearing the NPR interview, the experiences he recounted and the ways in which he handled them touched me so much I wrote down the name of his book and put in my first order to Amazon.com. I bought this book bracing myself for a hard, serious read (I had never voulunarily ventured into the realm of non-fiction before.) This book captured my attention from the first paragraph and proved to be the furthest thing from a "hard read" - I couldn't put it down! It was: touching, enlightening, sad, inspirational, but most of all unexpectedly FUNNY at times (thanks to James's often self-depricating sense of humor and his evolving "what matters most" outlook on life.) I can not recommend this book enough! It has turned me into a lover of non-fiction and more importantly it has made me aware of human rights abuses that are going on in Burma right now!

In 1988 though her democratic political party won the national elections in a romp, the military refused to let go of power and instead placed Daw Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest, killed many of her supporters, and drove others into exile. When British citizen James Mawdsley learned about the incarceration of the Burmese Nobel Laureate, he became outraged. Mawdsley became a one-man band staging protests and distributing antigovernment paraphernalia and is finally arrested and sentenced for seventeen years for various crimes that will shock western sensitivities to learn the felonis he committed.

Mr. Mawdsley tells his story on why he chose an activist path to shake up more then just the Burmese government, but to wake up the western democracies. Most readers will have dual feelings about the author, as his fanatic behavior seems suicidal yet courageous making him a fascinating character. The autobiography is taut and well written, gripping the audience from start to finish and deserves a large readership as the lesson learned is don't sit passively by whining, take action even small steps matter.

Harriet Klausner

James Mawdsley is a brave man. He has single-handedly taken on the Big Brotheresque regime of Burma with a considerable degree of success, involving the governments of various Western countries and organizations such as the Vatican and the UN. Having camped with disenfranchised minorities on the Burmese border, Mawdsley decides to go into Burma where he briefly distributes pro-democracy pamphlets and plays freedom songs before being arrested. The fact that he is western prevents him from being immediately beaten down, executed, or horribly tortured. He is roughed up, and subjected to some torture, but the regime never comes close to breaking him, and in fact only strengthens his will. Each time he was released, Mawdsley regained his health and went back into Burma, despite the fact that he had been tortured on the previous trip. Receiving help from a network of people beforehand, he ultimately went in alone so he wouldn't endanger anyone else. James' remarkable story is a diary of months in prison, his longing for food, the small tricks he learned to pass the time, and the solidarity that was felt between the other prisoners and even the guards. When he commented to a guard that he was under a seventeen year sentence, the guard shrugged and replied to Mawdsley, "I am here for thirty years." Though sometimes drifting into preaching, the book is focused and contains some excellent quotations from those who have similarly experienced totalitarianism, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. "The Iron Road" is an eye-opening glimpse of the power of one determined individual to change the world.