Sue Arnold's Top Book Recommendations
Want to know what books Sue Arnold recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Sue Arnold's favorite book recommendations of all time.
Teza once electrified the people of Burma with his protest songs against the dictatorship. Arrested by the Burmese secret police in the days of mass protest, he is seven years into a twenty-year sentence in solitary confinement. Cut off from his family and contact with other prisoners, he applies his acute intelligence, Buddhist patience, and humor to find meaning in the interminable days, and searches for news... more
Recommended by Sue Arnold, and 1 others. Sue ArnoldYes, I think she spent time on the Thai-Burmese border where all the refugees are based. It’s actually a jolly harrowing book, a bit of a whodunnit. The Lizard Cage is a prison about 100 miles from Rangoon and the Burmese equivalent of a gulag, with political prisoners, gangster prisoners, and the most reviled are the political prisoners in solitary. The book is about this man known as the... (Source)
Recommended by Sue Arnold, and 1 others. Sue ArnoldThe Piano Tuner, by Daniel Mason. It’s a first novel, and it’s extraordinarily original and interesting. It’s set in the southern Shan States in 1886 and it’s about Edgar Drake who specialises in tuning rare pianos. Drake gets a call from someone at the War Office saying would he come to see him about going out to Burma to tune an Erard, which is the rarest of all pianos: there were only maybe... (Source)
Recommended by Sue Arnold, and 1 others. Sue ArnoldFor fiction about Burma, I suppose you should start with the classic of all time, which has to be Orwell’s Burmese Days. The story is about John Flory, a timber merchant in Burma, who’s a bit disillusioned and nothing much is happening to him. Everything is based around the English Club, with all the tiny things that put you wrong, and it’s such a mean, bitchy little place. It’s terribly snooty,... (Source)
This collection of writings, now revised with substantial new material, including the text of the Nobel Peace Prize speech delivered by her son, reflects Aung San Suu Kyi's greatest hopes and fears for her people and her concern about the need for international...
more
Bertil LintnerThis is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand today’s Burmese politics. (Source)
Sean TurnellIt’s an extraordinarily inspirational book, as befits someone who has stood up for things and made such immense sacrifices. (Source)
Steve CrawshawFor more than two decades, every conversation in Burma or about Burma has ended up being about Aung San Suu Kyi. (Source)
The astonishing story of a young man's upbringing in a remote tribal village in Burma and his journey from his strife-torn country to the tranquil quads of Cambridge. In lyrical prose, Pascal Khoo Thwe describes his childhood as a member of the Padaung hill tribe, where ancestor worship and communion with spirits blended with the tribe's recent conversion to Christianity. In the 1930s, Pascal's grandfather captured an Italian Jesuit, mistaking him for a giant or a wild beast; the Jesuit in turn converted the tribe. (The Padaung are... more
Bertil LintnerPascal took part in the 1988 uprising and then escaped to Thailand and from there made it to the UK. He went to Cambridge where he read English literature; he learned to write very well in English and came out with this fantastic book. (Source)
Emma LarkinI recommend it as an all-encompassing experience of Burma on so many levels. (Source)
Sue ArnoldI’m not sure Pascal Koo Thwe is very happy or fulfilled because I feel that if you’re Burmese and you want to do something you should be there somehow. (Source)
Don't have time to read Sue Arnold's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.