The Guys of Rangoon

by Khet Zaw

523 pages, Paperback

Published May 18, 2020

Reviews

[Sébastien · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is the current hype in Myanmar book industry. Based on the true events, the book tells the story of infamous gangster Lanmadaw Pho Tote and his rivalries in late colonial era of Rangoon. From Pho Tote’s youth to how he came to be known as the mob boss. His story intertwined with several characters from rival gangs, his followers, the officers as well as some other social elites. The importance of his involvements in Burmese economy and political scenes in those years was told vibrantly, as well.

Personally, I want a narration with better fluidity, not in grace and elegant way of writing but in an engrossing way of storytelling. It is a story about gangsters and thugs however the narrative is too monotonous. If it is not for the background events, this book won’t be a page turner. Plus points for thorough research and reference. Truly impress with that. With these, the writer could do better to mimic the life and essence of these gangsters. 2.5 out of 5 stars.

And who the hell is responsible for the book’s layout or the writer doesn’t know how to break the paragraphs? Breaking after every single line except in dialogues. Come on, you should know that ruins the reader’s pace and interest or did you just Ctr+C and Ctrl+V the facebook posts to send to the offset?

[Wai Yan Tun · Rating 5 out of 5]

This compact tale of the criminals throughout Burmese history, specifically pre and post world war 2 period is a page-turning, engrossing and emotional saga. This I believe, is due to the charismatic, calculating leader of the gangsters of Rangoon from 1930 to 1945 and the protagonist of this book, လမ္းမ ေတာ္ ဖိုးတုတ္. This book is in it’s core a biographical novel, highlighting ဖိုးတုတ္’s famous exploits in the political and criminal underworld. The focus on it’s main character doesn’t diminish the love and attention that the author gave to the rest of the colourful and interesting cast of characters. My favourite character from the story would be the handsome, ever stoic and most importantly, human, criminal, ဂနမာေသာင္း ရီ. I imagine his charming disposition and all enthralling life enchanted the hearts of many readers of this book.

This book jumps around timelines following the adventure from multiple perspectives. Although one might think otherwise, the narrative never feels incoherent due to this story device, paradoxically making the story more gripping by fleshing out it’s side characters. There were multiple villains throughout the epic, which were - in my opinion - a bit stereotypical at times but due to the excellent character writing and pacing it didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. It is a gangster flick at it’s heart with a dash of political drama mixed in. A fun gangster book from top to bottom. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in this genre. I believe there are precious lessons to be taken away from the lives of these infamous gangsters and as the first biographical novel I read in Burmese, I can assure you that I will carry this story in my heart for the rest of my days.

[Yamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was an enjoyable read. The story revolves around a real-life character, gangster Lanmadaw Phoe Tote, his rivals, his gangster friends and his love life. Not only Phoe Tote's character is well-developed, also are his other friends'. I ended up rooting for Phoe Tote's killings, blood lust, prostitution, cheating and then some. It was very colorful to see all the interesting characters in the background of 1930's Rangoon. I do welcome genre expansion in Myanmar bookshelves and I'm glad this book became a hit during this time of confinement. This also will be the first book I read soonest after it was officially released (within 3 days of release).

[Caesar Min · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read it as soon as author published it online during the Covid-19 stay home period. It's really page-turner and the story transport you back into the golden days of Rangoon - about 90 years ago. I enjoyed reading it. I realize this book could be a great literary piece like The God Father if author Khett Zaw took a little more time and add more ambitious efforts in "writing". As he firstly published it COMPLETELY FREE online, the writing emphasize much more into the story itself & particular period only. The reading is entertaining but no value left after you finished it - maybe that's what author meant it particularly in the period like this :)

[Nan · Rating 2 out of 5]

‘The guys of Rangoon’ is a tale of infamous Gangster Lanmadaw Phoe Tote during colonial era. I am not impressed by U Phoe Tote and gangsters’ arrogant behaviors like other readers. I am more interested in the life of Rangoon and her citizens within these years. Rangoon was graceful and yet she was in a whole mess. Her life then was difficult but Rangoon is still beautiful.
The backstory is quite interesting & compelling. What disturbed me all the time are writing and printing. I didn’t feel satisfied with the character development. Timeline jumping is disorganized. I tried (tried so hard) to finish this one. And the printing! We can reduce at least 100 pages per book if the lines are arranged in paragraphs.
I am not a fan of ‘gangs’ stories, so I can only see the gangsters here as competitive & bloodthirsty group of people. I was surprised that many are comparing this one to ‘Peaky Blinders’.
As I read this through, I could imagine what the people had to go through then. Thinking deeply, our times have similarities. Apart from dreadful political situations, people living under constant fear and terror, world with enormous amount of ass-kissing sycophants, then, there were spies for British Government, Tohokai & other pol orgs. We now have informants (Dalans). They both are shockingly powerful. I was stunned when the propaganda song used by Dr. Ba Maw Govt. was mentioned. 
However, I welcome new category for Myanmar book shelf. Myanmar literature needs more new genres. Hopefully, the shelf will be colorful soon. Moreover, I do admire the author’s efforts. Obviously, he has done so many researches. He is one of the brave people who were charged for fighting for Democracy & Justice. Let’s pray for the safety and wellbeing of the author who was recently issued with warrant by Panel code 505A.

[Hsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please, someone recreate this as a movie with a super big budget. I need to see ဂန္ဓာမာ သောင်းရီ as a movie character. He has been influencing me ever since I read the book two years ago, and I always think about him first whenever I hear about this book. I can say how hot he was (I don’t like how they drew him in the comic book that was published) it’s not how I imagined him. Even though he’s not the main character, he made me read to the end.

[Alma Say · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book by Khet Zaw that I’ve read, and my impression of his work remains just as high as before. Once again, he tells a gripping story about old-time gangsters in Myanmar, set around the 1900s to 1940s. I absolutely loved it. So much happened—so many scenes and twists—that I almost forgot what had taken place in the beginning. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed it. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ stars 🤩 !

[Htet Aung Hlaing · Rating 5 out of 5]

This a good book functional-biography emphasizing on the life of Infamous Yangon Gangster "U Pho Tote". These bring me to how life in Yangon have struggle in early- 20th century. Where there have British have establish government state with many loophole for power struggle and Japan conquer myanmar during 1940. It's really good book to read during pandemic.

[Aung Naing · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Guys of Rangoon – 1930 by Khet Zaw

ကိုလိုနီခေတ် နဲ့ ဂျပန်ခေတ်ကာလ ရန်ကုန်က နာမည်ကြီးလူဆိုးတွေရဲ့အကြောင်းကို အဲဒီခေတ်ရဲ့ နိုင်ငံရေး သမိုင်းနောက်ခံတွေကို အခြေပြုပြီး ရေးဖွဲ့ထားတဲ့ ဆရာခက်ဇော်ရဲ့ လက်ရာ နာမည်ကြီး ဝတ္ထုတပုဒ်ပါ။ ဆရာခက်ဇော်ရဲ့ စတိုင် သမိုင်းဖြစ်ရပ်မှန်နဲ့ လူပုဂ္ဂိုလ်တွေရဲ့ စရိုက်ကို ဖော်ကြူးပြီး ဇာတ်လမ်း၊ဇာတ်အိမ် ခိုင်ခိုင်နဲ့ စိတ်ဝင်စားဘွယ်ဖတ်ရှုရတဲ့ စာအုပ်ကောင်းတအုပ်ပါ။

[Vincent Balthazar · Rating 4 out of 5]

My personal rating : A solid 3.5 ⭐
I have a love/hate relationship with this one. Maybe because I read The Guys From Mandalay first. I felt like there was less action compared to TGFM but the plot was Ok.

[May Sun Aung]

I had to dnf this. I'm losing interest and if I push myself to finish this, I'll end up hating the book and the characters. Will try again when the time is right.

[Kyaw Kyaw Soe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give this book 4 stars because I can see the effort that the author put into researching history and background of these characters.

[Kacy]

I have read books about this character but this time I want to know the difference between the character written here.

[Than Htwe]

Want to read before review

[Devi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too monotonous but I somehow managed to finish it. Found it attractive, lil bit overrated

[Thet Tun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love it! I will definitely read it again.

[Htet Myat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fuck that shit!

[DawLay DawLay · Rating 2 out of 5]

good

[Ye Gyi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nice books

[Phyo · Rating 5 out of 5]

ဖတ်ချင်တာကြာပြီ

[Tunhtet · Rating 5 out of 5]

yes