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nwhyte's review against another edition
http://nhw.livejournal.com/1008238.html[return][return]The first half of Freedom From Fear begins with two lengthy pieces by Aung San Suu Kyi on her father and on the country as a whole, and also includes two of her essays on Burmese literature. The next quarter of the book is taken up with her political statements from the brief period when she was free to make them at the end of the 1980s, and then the last section has some personal reminiscences by her friends, including to my surprise and to the editor's credit a mildly critical piece by Josef Silverstein. It falls however to a fellow student from her days at St Hugh's in Oxford to make a point in writing that is obvious when you look at the cover of the book: Aung San Suu Kyi is beautiful.[return][return]And also very brave. The editor of the book, published in 1990, was her late husband, Michael Aris, who writes with love and gratitude of the sixteen or so years they had together before she answered the call of destiny that they had both always known might some day come. She will be 63 this year; her father was 32 when he was killed (and she was only two). Her harassment and imprisonment by the Burmese state has lasted almost twenty years; her sons are now in their thirties. Politics is not an especially easy life anywhere; but this is something else. Freedom From Fear ends with Suu Kyi being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. It is an international disgrace that we seem no closer to resolving the situation in 2008.
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