The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma

What do we really know about Burma and its history? And what can Burma s past tell us about its present and even its future? For nearly two decades Western governments and a growing activist community have been frustrated in their attempts to bring about a freer and more democratic Burma through sanctions and tourist boycotts only to see an apparent slide toward even harsher dictatorship.

Now Thant Myint-U tells the story of modern Burma, and the story of his own family, in an interwoven narrative that is by turns lyrical, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Through his prominent family s stories and those of others, he portrays Burma s rise and decline in the modern world, from the time of Portuguese pirates and renegade Mughal princes through a sixty-year civil war that continues today the longest-running war anywhere in the world.

The River of Lost Footsteps is a work at once personal and global, a brisk, vivid history (Philip Delves Broughton, The Wall Street Journal) that makes Burma accessible and enthralling.