Lucas Stewart's Blog, page 5

# 15 – Mon Literature and Culture Committee

The Mon are the oldest civilisation in the South East Asia region.  Once a powerful empire whose lands and influence stretched across the Indo-China mainland, they are responsible for the introduction of Buddhism to the region and can attest to the oldest script in the region dating back to at least the 500’s AD.  Their empire grew on trade with India and Sri Lanka and their capital, The Golden Land, was known by the ancient Greeks and Romans (a 1st century Roman emissary to China passed through...1

Khin Mya Zin – Painter to Fiction

Khin Mya Zin (b.1956) is a poetess, painter and short story writer.  Her first short story was published in 1974 while another 4 years later ‘Mother is a Teacher’ was translated into Japanese and Russian.  6 books followed, including ‘Violent Colour’ (1983) and ‘Other Side of a Thoughtful Mind’ (2004) all of which have established KMZ as a realist writer of note.  She spends her time now as a board member of the PEN Myanmar chapter, organising contemporary live literature night all across the country and researching on literature...‘Other‘Violent‘Mother

Thakin Kodaw Hmaing Mausoleum

In the pantheon of great Burmese writers from the 20th century, one stands tall above all others.  The unofficial literature laureate of the Bama, a typesetter, a playwright, a journalist, a poet and a novelist, Thakin Kodaw Hmaing straddled two literary worlds.  The realm of traditional, time-honoured classical forms and the revisionist, modernism which he supported but never embraced in his own work.  A nationalist to his core, he supported and patronised many of the early 1920’s writers and po...20

Resist: Stories of Uprising

‘Resist: Stories of Uprising’ is the follow up to Comma Press’ hugely successful ‘history-into-fiction’ series.  My story, titled ‘No Pasaran’, is set during the Liverpool dockers dispute of 1995 to 1998 and follows two dockers who embark on an international  journey of solidarity.

Many thanks to Union reps and dockers Mike Carden, Terry and Tony in Liverpool for letting me in.

From the Comma Press website:

‘In this new collection of fictions and essays, spanning two millennia of British protest, authors, historia...

Sadaik Shorts: November 8th Diary

On November 8th 2015, Myanmar held its first democratic elections in a quarter of a century.  The literary freedom organisation PEN Myanmar sought to document this momentous day through literature.  The result is a collective diary of leading writers (several of whom had been imprisoned for their literary activism), who, through essays, short stories and poetry intimately explore, dissect and reconstruct their personal emotions in the course of a day which many of us in West now look on, dangero...8

Exploring Burma’s Bookshops: Book Street

As if Yangon needed to cement itself even further as a city of books, in 2017, a street of books opened on Theinbyu road on the east side of the Secretariat.  The initiative of short story specialist and current Minister of Information, U Pe Myint to encourage the city’s residents to embrace their literary heritage and love for literature (and possibly to provide a place for those book pallets stalls that have been displaced by recent urban expansion), Book Street originally featured nearly a...

# 14 – Myanmar Writers Association

The Myanmar Writers Association has a long and twisted history in Myanmar.  Dating back to at least the parliamentary democratic era in the 1950’s, the association, initially independent, was brought under the control of both the Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Home Affairs, during the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s.  General Ne Win, understanding the propaganda value of literature encouraged writers to uphold the national spirit and character of the Burmese nation and designated writ...

Chit Oo Nyo -Philosophy to Historical Novels

Chit Oo Nyo (b.1947) is a notable historical novelist, academic and scriptwriter.  Though born in Mandalay, he has spent most of his life in education, working in one capacity or another in the philosophy departments of universities across the country including the National University of Arts and Culture in Yangon.  His first stories appeared in the respected Moe Wai and Shumawa literary journals in the 1970’s before he progressed into the form which has made him famous, the historical novel.  M...

Siangbawi Than

For centuries, the Chin people, who now live in the hills that border Bangladesh and India, were animist, tracing their own oral histories that began when they left their original ‘chinram’, or homeland, a dark cave.

When the Christian missionaries came, following the British imperial invasion of the Chin Hills in the last decade of the 19th Century, their first mission took root in Hakha, now the capital town of the Chin Hills.

Though the Chin did at first reject the missionaries and their teachings, over...

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Sadaik Shorts: The Japanese Era Rangoon General Hospital

Memoirs are a common genre in Burmese literature in translation, and yet here, we have something unique.  Dr Myint Swe’s memoir of his time at Rangoon General Hospital No.1 is a rare and enjoyable account of wartime Burma under the Japanese occupation from the life of a Burman.

[image error]Title: The Japanese Era Rangoon Hospital: Memoirs of A Wartime Physician

Author: Dr Myint Swe,

Translator: Zarny Tun

Publisher: Myanmar Book Centre

 

 

(Sadaik Shorts is a series of very short reviews of fiction and non-fiction from Myanmar writers in English)

 

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