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real information which they receive, but also a national
pastime and passion that has led numerous people to
preserve secret libraries of books that have otherwise
been banned by the authorities.
Whilst everyday life is undeniable misery in Myanmar,
the people who Larkin describes are still full of
life, some how finding the will to live and live fully
despite their most restrictive of circumstances and to
try and make tiny but vital movements towards making
their country become free again.
This book is transformative – before I began reading
it I knew virtually nothing about Burma – at the end of
its 230 pages, I feel I’ve gained at least a valuable gloss
on its modern history and, wholly secondary to that,
BUY Emma Larkin books online from and
an insight into what drove Orwell to write – it was on
his return from Burma to England that he horrified his
family by announcing his intention to resign from the
colonial service and become a writer.
Secret Histories is truly a vital book, and, with
Stasiland, seems to be opening up a new genre (I’m
hating myself for writing these words): female writers
providing a personal perspective of political troubles;
not personal as in their own perspectives, but in that
they piece together the histories of the states they’re
writing about through the stories of those who have
lived within it. This strikes me as a vital counterbalance
to our more traditional, and of course wholly necessary,
overview histories. �
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