A Tale of Defiance and Deliverance in Burma
by Delphine Schrank
Once the shining promise of Southeast Asia, Burma in May 2009 ranks among the world's most repressive and impoverished nations. Its ruling military junta seems to be at the height of its powers. But despite decades of constant brutality - and with their leader, the Nobel Peace Prize-laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, languishing under house arrest - a shadowy fellowship of oddballs and misfits, young dreamers and wizened elders, bonded by the urge to say no to the system, refuses to relent. In the byways of Rangoon and through the pathways of Internet cafes, Nway, a maverick daredevil; Nigel, his ally and sometime rival; and Grandpa, the movement's senior strategist who has just emerged from nineteen years in prison, prepare to fight a battle fifty years in the making.
When Burma was still sealed to foreign journalists, Delphine Schrank spent four years underground reporting among dissidents as they struggled to free their country. From prison cells and safe houses, The Rebel of Rangoon follows the inner life of Nway and his comrades to describe that journey, revealing in the process how a movement of dissidents came into being, how it almost died, and how it pushed its government to crack apart and begin an irreversible process of political reform. The result is a profoundly human exploration of daring and defiance and the power and meaning of freedom.
"Starred Review. A remarkable chronicle of a multigenerational struggle in Burma bringing about important change." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. An important portrayal of a serious global issue that has been largely ignored." - Library Journal
"The author's longstanding closeness to her subject and her sources muddies her account, but her admiration for the people involved in the worthy struggle remains clear throughout." - Publishers Weekly
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Delphine Schrank is an award-winning reporter, a contributing editor to the Virginia Quarterly Review and a co-founder of DECA Stories, a pioneering writers' cooperative for deeply reported, global journalism. She was the Burma correspondent for The Washington Post, where she was an editor and staff writer.
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