Star struck

This weekend has seen the inaugural Yangon Literary Festival. Yes it is all happening here. Turns out we live in the cultural epicentre of the world… at least for this weekend.

The venue was in a big hotel by Inya Lake, which is always beautiful. There were book stalls and food stalls and lots and lots of interesting talks and lectures. The main attraction was The Lady herself. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. I think for most people outside of Myanmar, and even for those inside of Myanmar, she is the face of Myanmar, perhaps the one person you would name off the top of your head if you had to associate a single person with the country. Her life has been an incredible one, much of it spent under house arrest. But now she is free, an elected member of parliament, and a keen promoter of all things literary. So Ant and I, like the rest of the ticket holders were totally star struck the moment she walked in the room. Well to be honest, even before she walked in the room. The queue for her first session started 1hour before she arrived, it was hot hot hot, very sweaty, and everyone was crammed together, desperately hoping someone would open the door to the auditorium. Eventually it was opened and there was a minor crush as everyone piled in on top of each other. When she finally took her seat pretty much everyone in the room raised a camera or a phone to take her photograph.

We heard her speak twice. Once about her favourite books - Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” (it did sound like she had actually read it, and not just bought a rip off DVD of the movie from the local market), Harry Potter was also mentioned, as was a lot of poetry (we were all encouraged to commit as much poetry to memory as we could). It was very interesting, and she often referred to her time under house arrest - how reading books, the memory of books, the memories evoked when reading books first read in another time and place, even the smell of books, were so important to her.

Later on we heard her as part of a panel - "Desert Island Books" - moderated by Fergal Keane. She was sitting along side Vikram Seth (“A Suitable Boy” fame), William Dalrymple (“White Mughals”) and Jung Chang (“Wild Swans”). I guess with Daw Suu as the star attraction they had been able to pull in some other big names too. Vikram Seth was clearly touched when ASSK shared how much she had loved reading “A Suitable Boy” whilst she was under house arrest. Listening to them all talk was brilliant, as was a lecture by Timothy Garton-Ash on the continued relevance of Orwell – who of course lived in Burma – and then went on to write “Burmese Days”. Earlier in the day we listened to a talk by someone called Tom Maschler, who I had never heard of, but turns out he is a publisher who has published half the world it would seem. He was an elderly man, and rambled on about how he connected Roald Dahl to Quentin Blake, and discovered Ian McEuan, and published Catch 22 (originally called Catch 18)… he seemed to have met everyone and anyone who had ever written a book… which was quite entertaining.

To finish up here are some snaps of the lady herself!