On The Road To Mandalay: Portraits Of Ordinary People: Tales of Ordinary People (Asian Portraits)

Inspired by Chicago journalist Studs Terkels accounts of the hopes and dreams of ordinary Americans Rangoon-based writer Mya Than Tint introduces us to 34 of Burmas fifty four million ordinary people the a-nya-ta-ra. As he travelled through Burma on literary lecture tours in the late 1980s he encountered porters sailors fortune-tellers waitresses artists and petty criminals on the road to Mandalay. Their stories were published in Burma in Kalya magazine. Himself a prolific translator into Burmese of eastern and western classical works of literature this is Mya Than Tints first major work to have been translated into English--an inspiring read and itself now a classic.