Miss Burma
Charmaine Craig“[An] epic new novel... The sweeping, multi-generational story of a family belonging to the Karen ethnic minority, Miss Burma charts both a political history and a deeply personal one - and of those incendiary moments when private and public motivations overlap.” - The Los Angeles Times
Miss Burma tells the story of modern-day Burma through the eyes of Benny and Khin, husband and wife, and their daughter Louisa. After attending school in Calcutta, Benny settles in Rangoon, then part of the British Empire, and falls in love with Khin, a woman who is part of a long-persecuted ethnic minority group, the Karen. World War II comes to Southeast Asia, and Benny and Khin must go into hiding in the eastern part of the country during the Japanese Occupation, beginning a journey that will lead them to change the country’s history.
“Miss Burma is a timely exposition of trust after trauma. [It] also serves as a much-needed recalibration of history, one that redresses the narrative imbalance by placing other ethnic, non-Burmese points of view at the centre of its story... In reimagining the extraordinary lives of her mother and grandparents, Craig produces some passages of the exquisitely precise description... and brings one of Burma’s many lost histories to vivid life.” - Emma Larkin, The New York Times Book Review
Based on the story of the author's mother and grandparents, Miss Burma is a captivating portrait of how modern Burma came to be and of the ordinary people swept up in the struggle for self-determination and freedom.