Burmese Lessons: A Love Story [Hardcover]

Karen Connelly was deemed something of a prodigy in 1993, when, at age 24, she won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Touch the Dragon: A Thai Journal. Connelly has continued to astound, most notably with her 2005 novel, The Lizard Cage, about a Burmese political prisoner, which won the Orange Broadband Prize for New Writers in Britain. Connelly’s latest offering can be considered a non-fiction prequel to The Lizard Cage. In this new book, we learn how the author constructed the characters and researched the events contained in her much-praised novel. Burmese Lessons is really two books in one. The first half is a haunting and poetic account of the author’s visits to the oppressed Burmese capital of Rangoon. The latter half is mainly set in neighbouring Thailand, where Connelly has a passionate but troubled affair with the charismatic leader of a Burmese guerrilla group. Connelly fans will be enthralled. Together, the two distinct sections reveal aspects of a writer’s life that are normally kept hidden. However, the two halves are so different in tone that they do not sit comfortably between the same covers. The Burmese portion unfolds like a dream and, at times, like a nightmare. The Thai half is written in a more down-to-earth, conversational style filled with true confessions, including some startling revelations about Connelly’s life at age 17, just as she was leaving her hometown of Calgary for the Thai adventure that spawned Touch the Dragon. Connelly’s eureka moment in Burmese Lessons occurs one spooky night when she is lost in Rangoon and stops to ask some rail yard workers for a drink of water. One of the workers is a “feral” boy, somewhere between nine and 12 years old. Connelly is mesmerized by this child labourer who, the author decides, shall be one of the central characters in a novel. That night provided the genesis for The Lizard Cage. If nothing else, Burmese Lessons will entice you to read or reread Connelly’s novel. But despite its flaws, her new book also shows that the expectations foisted upon a prodigy in 1993 were not misplaced.

“Passionate and poetic.” —The New York Times Book Review
 
“[Burmese Lessons] boldly examines Burma’s tumultuous climate and nuanced cultural ethos with colorful prose and gritty self-reflection.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
“Karen Connelly has given her heart to Asia. I bow in gratitude to this writer whose love story is personal and political—and true.” —Maxine Hong Kingston, author of I Love a Broad Margin to My Life and The Woman Warrior
 
“A tour de force. At once beautiful literature, an intimate account of a moving journey, a nuanced portrait of another country, a complex yet quietly honest reportage, this book is also a page-turner. It will, I believe, become a classic in the new genre that mixes personal memory with public events.” —Susan Griffin, author of A Chorus of Stones and Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy
 
“Sweeping in its historical research, devoid of personal commentary (or indeed experience), I highly recommend Burmese Lessons. In quietly beautiful, searching prose, Connelly shows us the small stories. . . . Burmese Lessons shows us more than a place, or a person in a place: it shows us a way to be in the world: open, seeing, breathing, awake.” —Jamie Zeppa, Literary Review of Canada
 
“Beautifully written. . . . The book is rich with a nostalgia for Connelly’s youth, and the passion of it, when she flung herself into unknown cultures and the arms of dangerous lovers.” —The Globe and Mail (interview)
 
“Extraordinary.” —More 
 
“A harrowing account of life under Burma’s military dictatorship—the terror, the treachery, the brutality, but also the astonishingly resilient serenity, camaraderie and fatalism of the Burmese people. . . . An insightful, riveting book.” —B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction jury citation
 
“A poetic love story with all the strengths of her previous works, a tale of a wounded country and a gifted political activist struggling to transform it.” —Maclean’s
 
“[Connelly] compels admiration for her brave intrusions into dangerous and awkward situations, and above all for her candour.” ––National Post (Open Book feature)
 
“Connelly has continued to astound. . . . [Her] fans will be enthralled.” —Quill & Quire
 
“With Burmese Lessons, [Connelly] explores a relationship that defined who she is today.” —National Post
 
“The enchanting story of a highly erotic love affair, one made wonky and dangerous by politics. . . . The book goes far beyond memoir. . . . Her personal loss has become her book’s gain.” —Winnipeg Free Press
 
“Connelly is a sensualist, as a writer; this memoir is redolent with the smells of food, the stink of bodies, the weight of stones carried on her head as she helps the women in a camp build a well, the sharp, deep pleasures of sex, the edgy frustrations of sex denied, for the sake of propriety. . . . Readers familiar with The Lizard Cage will experience several shocks of recognition of characters and images and ideas . . . especially the sweet wisdom of monks, and the fleeting encounter with a feral boy who becomes one of the most memorable characters in Canadian fiction.” —The Globe and Mail

Praise for Karen Connelly:

“[Karen Connelly] shows us what autobiography usually veils: the human spirit not at its most defiant and brave, but as it really is and can only be.”
— The New York Times