The Lady: Aung San Suu Kyi Nobel Laureate and Burma's Prisoner [Hardcover]

Barbara Victor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1998

This is the first full account of one woman's heroic struggle against SLORC, the brutal military junta in power in Burma since 1988, and an expose of one of the most violent and corrupt regimes in the world today. Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been leading a battle for democracy, freedom, and human rights in Burma. The daughter of General Aung San, the man who gained independence for Burma from the British and who was assassinated on the eve of Burmese independence, Aung San Suu Kyi alone made the world aware of the regime that functions by torture, terror, and murder. Based on exclusive interviews with the military leaders of SLORC, the drug lords who control the export of opium and heroin, foreign business investors and apologists for the junta, jailed and tortured victims of SLORC, and Aung San Suu Kyi herself, the story of Burma today emerges: Orwellian, tragic, and with only one flicker of hope, known to all as "the Lady."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Aung San Suu Kyi's first-ever biography bends over backward in the name of "balance." Like almost all visitors to this embattled country, Pulitzer-nominated journalist Barbara Victor entered Burma (now called Myanmar) under the auspices of its government, a brutal dictatorship that regularly jails and tortures its dissidents. The situation presents certain intrinsic dilemmas, considering that Victor was never able to interview the subject of her book, the most famous dissident of all: Aung San Suu Kyi, the beloved "Lady" of Burma's democracy movement. Nonetheless, Victor provides an excellent overview of Aung San Suu Kyi's career and achievements, in particular her turbulent early life. Her account makes clear the strong influence of Aung San Suu Kyi's father, a revered military hero who was assassinated in 1947 in the struggle for Burmese independence when she was only two years old. Especially in contrast to Aung San Suu Kyi's almost saintly self-sacrifice, the Burmese junta (cursed with the movie-villain acronym SLORC) tends to come off as almost cartoonishly evil. Victor's access to top-level Burmese generals precludes such simplistic analysis, but what's fascinating is how the regime consistently betrays itself, exposing its own corruption and moral decay even as it twists the truth to serve its own ends.

From Booklist

Victor, a journalist nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, has written the first biography of Daw Aung Sau Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for her resistance against Burma's military junta, the SLORC. Called "the Lady" by authorities in an effort to trivialize her identity, Daw Suu Kyi endured six years of house arrest and deprivation, becoming a political and spiritual leader by virtue of her courage, stoicism, and unwavering support of human rights, nonviolence, and democracy. Victor's portrait goes beyond capturing the poignancy of the Lady's struggle, particularly in its focus on how much she has been inspired by the legacy of her father, General Aung San, assassinated after negotiating Burma's independence from Britain. As affecting as Victor's analysis of Daw Suu Kyi is, her stinging account of the brutality and corruption of the SLORC, and of how harsh and desperate life is for most Burmese, is perhaps of more import. Burma is an irresistible lure for multinational corporations, so once again greed rules, and the world allows fascism to thrive. Donna Seaman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 226 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber (April 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571199445
• ISBN-13: 978-0571199440
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #126,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #14 in Books > History > Asia > Myanmar

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