Tightly written, at times cinematic: a stirring example of individual activism that shows why large democracies must aid and...
British human rights activist Mawdsley’s compelling debut chronicles his opposition to the Burmese military regime.
Unfulfilled by student life, the author left school in 1993, at age 20, and relocated to Southeast Asia. He became interested in the plight of Burmese Nobel Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whose democratic political party overwhelmingly won national elections in 1988 but whose victory was rejected by the military. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest, and many of her followers were killed or driven into exile. Mawdsley’s first contacts were with student exiles from the Burmese democracy movement who worked from Bangkok to assist sympathizers still living at home. He became an English teacher at one of the villages inside the border but soon graduated to more visible and dramatic forms of support, staging one-man protests and distributing antigovernment cassette tapes and leaflets. In and out of trouble with the Burmese government, Mawdsley ultimately chose to become a political prisoner, hoping that the detention of a British citizen would arouse support and concern in the West. The government was easily provoked; he was arrested, quickly tried, and sentenced to 17 years for, among other things, breaking a law against breaking the law. The author’s willingness to goad his captors and remind them of their illegitimacy even as he was interrogated and tortured seems at times more suicidal than courageous; much as readers will admire Mawdsley’s daring, they’ll also notice he’s a bit of a zealot. But it’s clear that this game of wits partly enabled him to survive four years in captivity. Coming at a time when the relationships between Western democracies and politically troubled developing nations have been cast into stark relief by the “war on terrorism,” his account deserves a wide audience.
Tightly written, at times cinematic: a stirring example of individual activism that shows why large democracies must aid and encourage smaller ones.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2002
ISBN: 0-86547-637-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: North Point/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
