Wendy Law-Yone – författare

POLITICIAN • PRISONER • PARENTA portrait of one of the most charismatic, but unknown, world leaders Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and crusader for democracyin Myanmar, is once again behind bars. Her resounding victory at the polls, and re-election to office as civilian head of state, were overturned by the February 2021 military coup – a move with ruinous consequences.Aung San Suu Kyi has been here before. The first half of her political career was spent under house arrest. But this time she has been disappeared into prison in Naypyidaw, following an array of charges clearly calculated to keep her out of politics and out of sight for the rest of her life. This time she is caught in a zero-sum game.Once deified by the international community for her advocacy of democracy and human rights, yet later vilified for her denial of the Burmese military’s genocidal campaign against the Rohingya, Aung San Suu Kyi’s image survives largely untarnished within Myanmar. Her supporters refer to her as ‘Amay Suu’ (Mother Suu). Heir to the political and spiritual legacy of her father, General Aung San, independence hero and martyr, she remains the lodestar of nationalist aspirations, and matriarch for a nation in distress.This book tracks Aung San Suu Kyi’s transformation from daughter of a national hero to materfamilias of Myanmar, placing her firmly within the context of the Burmese Buddhist notions of nationhood and motherhood and explaining her continuing role as the figurehead of the nation’s struggles. The result is a unique portrait of a living legend, rendered by a compatriot and contemporary, the novelist Wendy Law-Yone.POLITICIANDecades spent spearheading the fight for democracy in Myanmar – following her father Aung San’s legacy as founder of the modern Burmese nation.PRISONERHaving already spent halfher political career under house arrest, in December 2022, Aung San Suu Kyiwas sentenced to 33 yearsin prison.PARENTTo her exiled family anda nation.

POLITICIAN • PRISONER • PARENTA portrait of one of the most charismatic, but unknown, world leaders Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and crusader for democracyin Myanmar, is once again behind bars. Her resounding victory at the polls, and re-election to office as civilian head of state, were overturned by the February 2021 military coup – a move with ruinous consequences.Aung San Suu Kyi has been here before. The first half of her political career was spent under house arrest. But this time she has been disappeared into prison in Naypyidaw, following an array of charges clearly calculated to keep her out of politics and out of sight for the rest of her life. This time she is caught in a zero-sum game.Once deified by the international community for her advocacy of democracy and human rights, yet later vilified for her denial of the Burmese military’s genocidal campaign against the Rohingya, Aung San Suu Kyi’s image survives largely untarnished within Myanmar. Her supporters refer to her as ‘Amay Suu’ (Mother Suu). Heir to the political and spiritual legacy of her father, General Aung San, independence hero and martyr, she remains the lodestar of nationalist aspirations, and matriarch for a nation in distress.This book tracks Aung San Suu Kyi’s transformation from daughter of a national hero to materfamilias of Myanmar, placing her firmly within the context of the Burmese Buddhist notions of nationhood and motherhood and explaining her continuing role as the figurehead of the nation’s struggles. The result is a unique portrait of a living legend, rendered by a compatriot and contemporary, the novelist Wendy Law-Yone.POLITICIANDecades spent spearheading the fight for democracy in Myanmar – following her father Aung San’s legacy as founder of the modern Burmese nation.PRISONERHaving already spent halfher political career under house arrest, in December 2022, Aung San Suu Kyiwas sentenced to 33 yearsin prison.PARENTTo her exiled family anda nation.

POLITICIAN • PRISONER • PARENTA portrait of one of the most charismatic, but unknown, world leadersAung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and crusader for democracyin Myanmar, is once again behind bars. Her resounding victory at the polls, and re-election to office as civilian head of state, were overturned by the February 2021 military coup – a move with ruinous consequences.Aung San Suu Kyi has been here before. The first half of her political career was spent under house arrest. But this time she has been disappeared into prison in Naypyidaw, following an array of charges clearly calculated to keep her out of politics and out of sight for the rest of her life. This time she is caught in a zero-sum game.Once deified by the international community for her advocacy of democracy and human rights, yet later vilified for her denial of the Burmese military’s genocidal campaign against the Rohingya, Aung San Suu Kyi’s image survives largely untarnished within Myanmar. Her supporters refer to her as ‘Amay Suu’ (Mother Suu). Heir to the political and spiritual legacy of her father, General Aung San, independence hero and martyr, she remains the lodestar of nationalist aspirations, and matriarch for a nation in distress.This book tracks Aung San Suu Kyi’s transformation from daughter of a national hero to materfamilias of Myanmar, placing her firmly within the context of the Burmese Buddhist notions of nationhood and motherhood and explaining her continuing role as the figurehead of the nation’s struggles. The result is a unique portrait of a living legend, rendered by a compatriot and contemporary, the novelist Wendy Law-Yone.POLITICIANDecades spent spearheading the fight for democracy in Myanmar – following her father Aung San’s legacy as founder of the modern Burmese nation.PRISONERHaving already spent halfher political career under house arrest, in December 2022, Aung San Suu Kyiwas sentenced to 33 yearsin prison.PARENTTo her exiled family anda nation.

Sometimes the hardest journey is the road home.Na Ga was always in search of a better life. But now she sits, alone, in a hotel room in Wanting, a godforsaken town on the Chinese-Burmese border. Plucked from her wild life as a rural eel-catcher, Na Ga is then abandoned by her would-be rescuers in Rangoon. Later, as a teenager, she finds herself chasing the dream of a new life in Thailand - where further betrayals and violations await. Yet it seems that her fighting spirit will not be broken. But for how long can Na Ga belong nowhere and with no one? In the dingy hotel in Wanting she is forced to confront her compulsion to keep running, and to ask herself why, until now, she's resisted the journey home.Longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2011.

‘Die, and it’s the vile earth; live, and it’s the golden parasol,’ went the old Burmese saying. Why not aim for the pinnaclewith everything they had?The vile earth would be theirs soon enough.A year after Burma’s military coup in 1962, Ed Law-Yone, daredevil proprietor of the influential newspaper, The Nation, was arrested and his newspaper shut down.Eventually, his teenaged daughter Wendy was also imprisoned before managing to escape the country.Ed spent five years as a political prisoner, but the moment he was freed he set about trying – unsuccessfully – to stage a revolution, and never gave up hope for the restoration of democracy in Burma. Exiled in America, he died disappointed – though not before entrusting to his daughter Wendy his papers and unpublished memoirs: of a career that had spanned the full sweep of modern Burmese history – from colonial rule to independence; from the era of parliamentary democracy to the military coup that would usher in decades of totalitarian rule.Now, some forty years later, as Burma enters another period of transition, Wendy Law-Yone has honoured her father’s legacy by setting his remarkable career in a larger, more personal, story. The result is Golden Parasol, a unique portrait of a patriot, his family, and a nation whose vicissitudescontinue to intrigue the world.

Die burmesisch-amerikanische Autorin Wendy Law-Yone beschreibt in diesem Buch, wie wichtig für sie und ihr Schaffen die Begegnung mit der deutschen Sprache und dem Werk Friedrich Dürrenmatts gewesen ist. Über die deutsche Sprache kam sie zum Schreiben. Beeindruckt von Dürrenmatts Tragikomödie "Der Besuch der alten Dame" beschäftigte sie, die von der Militärdiktatur aus ihrem Land vertrieben wurde, sich insbesondere mit dem Thema der Rache. Ihr Bericht ist sehr persönlich, offen und heiter.Dieser Band präsentiert einem deutschsprachigen Publikum erstmals das Werk einer postkolonialen Autorin, die im englischsprachigen Raum bereits eine anerkannte Größe ist.Erscheint in deutscher und englischer Sprache.Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Johanna von Koppenfels, mit einem Nachwort von Marijke DengerTexte zur Friedrich Dürrenmatt Gastprofessur für Weltliteratur, herausgegeben von Oliver Lubrich