Miss Burma

For those looking for a history lesson on the nation of Burma (now called Myanmar) you might look in a history book. Or you could slog your way through Miss Burma, a novel by Charmaine Craig that tells the story of Burma from about the beginning of World War II, when it was a British colony invaded by the Japanese, to the mid-'60s through the eyes of one family.

The story begins with an Anglo-Indian Jew, Benny, marrying Khin, a Karen woman (Karens, I learned, are a distinct ethnic group from Burmans, who are the predominant group in Burma, and have been historically oppressed). They have four children, the oldest being Louisa, who wins the title contest and becomes a film star.

In between all this Benny is jailed as a political prisoner, Khin has an affair with a general named Lynton, who will later marry Louisa.


Sadly, much of the book is the women in the story using men to survive, which I'm sure was true but makes for depressing reading. There are a few historical people involved, namely Ne Win, who was a tyrant and, supposedly, kept Louisa as a mistress.

I started out liking the book, as I certainly don't anything about Burma and it was pretty interesting. But as the book wore on I cared less and less about the characters, and the politics got confusing. There are a couple of American CIA agents involved, and it was never clear to me what they were up to. Overall, the book feels like a romance novel that has aspirations of being literary.