Customer Reviews

The Lizard Cage

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4 star:		(3)
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Imagine serving a 20 year sentence for writing protest songs, or eating lizards (raw) to ward off starvation and disease. Imagine that possession of a pen could add another 10 years to your sentence, along with beatings and disgusting tortures. This is Teza's world, as narrated by Karen Connelly, in this honest portrayal of life under the generals in Burma (Myanmar). Connelly doesn't pull any punches. Nor does she offer false hopes and solutions for her characters to assuage the reader's sensibilities. This can make the book, at times, a hard read. However, don't let this put you off. Despite the horrors, one thing shines through - the indefatigable human spirit. Karen Connelly is a poet and this is her first novel. Her poetic talent is evident in the descriptions of the beauty of Burma, its history and its people. Her poet's soul leads me to my one minor criticism - I think it sometimes interrupts the story's momentum. But this small quibble doesn't prevent me from giving the book 5 stars.

I had known a little about Burma and its problems before reading The Lizard Cage, but had not given it much thought, because of, I suppose, lack of media coverage. A sad comment on our media (and me). Anyone who reads this book will surely be unable to extinguish Burma from their thoughts and, hopefully, will add their voice to the campaign against the inhumane regime of the generals.

How can a book be both beautiful and luminescent, and also dark and painful? The pain is because this book is based on stories out of Burmese prisons. Connelly, the author of Touch the Dragon, a Thai Journal, lived for almost two years on the Thai/Burma border among Burmese exiles and dissidents.

Teza, a young singer, is sentenced to prison for 20 years for his work against the repressive regime in Burma. Teza supports dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was placed under house arrest. (Even though she won the election in 1989--this part of the book is based on actual events).

Teza has been in prison for seven years, in solitary confinement. Teza calls his home the Lizard Cage, because of the importance of the little green lizards in his life. Sometimes he catches and eats them to help keep him alive. And sometimes he watches them, because they inspire him. One day he has a new warder, a food server, a young orphaned boy.

The book follows their relationship, and their relationship with the Senior Jailor Chit Niang and other prisoners. They all seem to be a sort of insane dysfunctional family--one trying to survive incredibly brutal and inhumane conditions. Teza and the boy both find a different sort of release, with the boy truly freeing Teza.

There is brutality and pain in the world and there is genocide, torture, families being driven apart, disease, abandoned orphaned children. It is hard to remember all this in our privileged, calm and stable lives. Can we do something? Yes, sometimes we can--and should.

Is this book easy to read? Is it fun? There are light and beautiful moments, moments of transcendent joy. Connelly is also a poet, and her words are strung together almost like a long prose poem, like natural pearls strung on a cord, warm to the touch and reflecting light.

Armchair Interviews says: Hard to read because of the subject but beautifully written.

This is one of the most compelling and haunting stories I've ever read, and I've read a LOT! I would say that this is in my top 20 all time favorites. If you have ever read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, then you will understand what this book is about. No matter how desperate, how demeaning, how hopeless the situation, you are always free to choose your attitude. The author, Karen Connelly, can magnify even the most insignificant detail into an entire day's focus for the main character. Very Zen. You will not soon forget this book once you've read it.

Imagine serving a 20 year sentence for writing protest songs or eating lizards raw to ward off starvation and disease. Imagine that possession of a pen could add another 10 years to your sentence, along with beatings and disgusting tortures. This is Teza's world as narrated by Karen Connelly in this honest portrayal of life under the generals in Burma (Myanmar). Connelly doesn't pull any punches. Nor does she offer false hopes and solutions for her characters to assuage the reader's sensibilities, making the book, at times, a hard read. However, don't let this put you off. Despite the horrors, one thing shines through - the indefatigable human spirit. Karen Connelly is a poet and this is her first novel. Her poetic talent is evident in the descriptions of the beauty of Burma, its history and it's people. Her poet's soul leads me to my one minor criticism - I think it sometimes interrupts the story's momentum. But this small quibble doesn't prevent me from giving the book 5 stars.

I had known a little about Burma and its problems before reading The Lizard Cage, but had not given it much thought, because of, I suppose, lack of media coverage. A sad comment on our media (and me). Anybody who reads this book will surely be unable to extinguish Burma from their thoughts and, hopefully, will add their voice to the campaign against the inhumane regime of the generals.

A common enough technique - a book that begins with its ending and circles back to tell the story. The problem here, and why I picked it up three times before realizing just how good it was, is that we're in Burma living among characters who have between one and three names. It makes those first pages a burden, lifted of course, when you finish the book and turn to them again. The Lizard Cage is a dense novel, lush with the words, extremely well paced (after that first chapter) and for the most part, an absolute pleasure. Burma is a mystery to me. I can't account for the accuracy of the book, but in the end, novels are supposed to convince you of their own worlds, not reflect the real one. In that, Lizard Cage succeeds as you step into a world of prison brutality, rape, torture and tiny moments of transcendence. Occasionally Connelly lets her words get the better of her and brief bumps of purple prose jar an otherwise smooth four hundred odd pages. It's quite a feat in the end, a Canadian woman stepping into the shows of a collection of Burmese men, so hats off and heads bent.

The novel engages from its beginning in 1995, which is actually its ending, through the harrowing story of Teza, imprisoned in Burma for twenty years for writing protest songs and Zwa Gyi, the twelve year old boy that works in the prison. Teza has been in prison now for 8 years or so, and the Burmese regime has not loosened its grip on dissidents. It's impossible to explain the plot without giving up important moments but the story takes place almost entirely in the prison with brief flashbacks to how Teza ended up there. A secondary character, Chit Naing, a jailer at the prison also plays an important role, showing some compassion for both Teza and Zwa and developing an illegal relationship with Teza's mother.

The story is often violent and horrific. Zwa must stand outside the prison shower room to catch rats that swim through the drains so that he can supplement his starvation diet. Teza is regularly beaten and in a couple of cases this is pretty graphically described. None of the prisoners get enough food, and rape and violence is common. However, there are scraps of hope throughout the novel, in the relationships between Teza and Zwa most poignantly but also in the kindness one violent prisoner, Tiger, shows Zwa and the ultimate kindness that Naing offers to both Teza and Zwa.

The plot hinges on a white pen that is brought to Teza when he is locked in the political cells, in solitary seeing only the warder who takes away his garbage and Handsome, the violent warder who guards the cell block. The pen is brought in an attempt to frame Teza and add years to his sentence, but somehow Teza realizes what is going on and manages to get rid of it. He is beaten within an inch of his life by Handsome when they cannot find the pen, and the entire prison must undergo a search for it. Slowly, we learn that Zwa has the pen and as Zwa brings Teza food when Teza is recovering from his beating, the two develop a friendship.

Meanwhile, through the flashbacks, we learn of the horrible, oppressive and violent government of Burma, represented in their imprisoning of first Teza's father and then Teza himself as well as through the actions of the prison and its treatment of the political prisoners. Politicals are not allowed to have writing instruments or paper on pain of severe torture, increased sentencing or even death. The lost white pen represents much more than just a banned item, but the silenced voices of people across the country and the power of words to work against oppression.

Much of the plot focuses on Teza and his life in the prison which is pretty bleak. He has nothing in his cell and uses meditation and walking to fill his days. He also reconstructs events from the past to fill his mind and through these reconstructions we learn about his own history and his brother who has fled Burma to work on the borders for revolution. There are wonderful details in these sections about his talking with the lizards and his distaste at having to eat them but the need to do so in order to stay alive (the distaste doesn't come from the unpleasantness of the food but the violation of a Buddhist principle in killing another being). As the novel progresses, Teza embraces Buddhist principles more and more.

If there is a weakness in the novel it is perhaps that there are times when the reminiscences and the dreaming becomes too much, and I would find myself not paying that much attention. The novel despite the horrific situations and people maintains an underlying sense of hope, although the feeling as you read it is pretty depressing.

I had this book for a while (I had read a good review) although quite a few years passed before I ventured into it. Recently, facing horror in my own life, I picked it up again; this time I was drawn in. Ms. Connelly is a beautiful writer. Her descriptions of character and place created a visual image that surprisingly, subtly, settled in and stayed; it was not long before I was hooked. There is horror in this novel, brilliantly written, and now I understand (Burmese) authoritarian repressive rule like never before. The editing is superb; everything expertly, perfectly goes together. This is truly literature at its finest. (* Quote from Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness.")

I bless the day that I discovered Karen Connelly's 2005 novel The Lizard Cage. I read this book over a year ago and was so deeply effected, I had to put it aside and allow my emotions to surface before I could review it. I cannot remember reading a novel as riveting, or as gut wrenching, yet as full of so much compassion as this vitally important work of literary art. With radiant prose that is gripping and revelatory, Connelly has given us a rare look inside the grimmest, most shuttered police state in the world.

At the highly charged core of this electrifying story is Burma, a country and its people. It is the country now known as Myanmar, the most repressive regime in the world and a country few outsiders know. But Connelly knows Burma and she knows it well. She visited there frequently during the 1990s and lived along the Thai-Myanmar border for two years. Among the many Burmese she has interviewed for her story is Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been incarcerated or under house arrest in Burma for varying lengths of time since 1989. Aung San Suu Kyi is now free from house arrest but Connelly is banned from returning to the country by Myanmar's ruling military junta.

Connelly's story of The Lizard Cage is vast of vision and potent in message. The brutal force of incarceration and the cruelties with which political prisoners of Myanmar are tortured succeed in shrinking a world of limited personal freedom down to nothing more than the smallest of cages. Although the cage can confine the body, it cannot confine the spirit and this is universal truth at the heart of this gripping, suspenseful tale.

There are two main characters in The Lizard Cage, both innocents in a notorious Burmese prison: Teza, a young political prisoner serving a 20 year sentence in solitary confinement for singing songs of protest against the dictatorship, and a nameless 12 year old orphan, who because his father was a prison guard there, has lived his entire life behind the prison walls, killing rats in order to eek out a meager existence there.

Like so many Burmese, Teza is a practicing Buddhist and it is through his spiritual practice that he is able to endure the interminable days of solitary confinement, the sadistic guards, the brutality, the starvation, the maggots, the reeking latrine pail, the amoebic dysentery. With extraordinary grace and humor he lays bare his innermost self, and he does so with profound effect on many around him, including Chit Naing, the senior jailer who is so moved by this extraordinary young man, he befriends Teza at great risk to himself.

Teza and the orphan boy also come to develop a beautiful relationship within the prison walls. It is an emotional bonding which speaks volumes about love and compassion amidst violence and injustice. Both are a different kind of prisoner but who dream of the same freedom. With the help of Chit Naing, both will achieve it albeit in different ways. Through the power of hope and love, compassion and human connection, both will find freedom and both will be liberated.

The Lizard Cage is so much more than fiction or a work of the imagination. Connelly has dramatized the harsh realities of life in Burma, the life of oppression under perhaps the worst authoritarian regime in the world, and by doing so she has transformed these realities into literature that has vast reach beyond the repressive borders of Myanmar.

The Lizard Cage is one of the best novels that I have ever read. I hope my review will help compel other readers to seek it out. Read this book and experience its power, its beauty, its soul!

Karen Connelly is a superb author, she brings both skilled craftsmanship of story-telling, and a penetrating evaluation of the human soul that soars beyond the confines of the cage. We live in a world where we are all connected, and, it is critical in a time where we cannot save Teza, or other cruel victims of repression - that we remember. The story of Teza is replayed in Burma every day, but as well, in far too many places in our world. We cannot save all victims of terror - but - thanks to Karen Connelly, we can at least not forget - we can keep them in mind, we can share the feelings of their terror, and rejoice in her story that reminds us that the human spirit can overcome both terror and the cage. Until Burma is free, until there are no more victims of repression, at least let us remember Teza's soul and spirit and song, as taught to us by Karen Connelly. You will as well be rewarded by discovering as incredible new author.

This book is amazing. I think we owe a great debt to Karen Connelly for writing this novel which eloquently exposes the brutality of the military regime in Burma while celebrating the beauty of Burmese culture, food and buddhism. This book is a great contribution and has the potential to entertain through its strong writing and story line while educating readers about the reality of life in Burma. On a grand scale, Connelly has found a way to write beautifully and inspiringly about humanity with all its darkness, flaws, hope and gentleness. Well Done!