True Love and Bartholomew: Rebels on the Burmese Border
Cambridge University Press, 4/11/1991
EAN 9780521390194, ISBN10: 0521390192
Hardcover, 426 pages, 23.4 x 15.6 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
Jonathan Falla, a nurse and prizewinning playwright, spent an illegal year living with the Karen rebels. His richly illustrated account of life in the Burmese jungle creates an evocative portrait of a people fighting to preserve their way of life. The Karen, one of Burma's many minority peoples, have been waging an increasingly desperate war for autonomy against the Burmese government since 1949. Burma's 'closed door' policies have prevented any close study of Karen society since the 1920s and more recent writers have been forced to concentrate on Karen refugee communities in Thailand. Discussing all aspects of Karen life, this is no ordinary anthropological study but a highly personalized account. Based on the lives of individual Karen there are chapters on music, food, love, the patterns of forest and river life, on women, language, weaponry and mercenaries, and on the symbols of rebel nationalism.
Foreword Nigel Barley
Acknowledgements
1. A bronze drum
2. Boar tusk's children
3. White collar flowerland
4. True love at home
5. Water child, land child
6. A simple man
7. Fighting mean, fighting clean
8. Great lake and the elephant man
9. Bartholomew's borders
10. The three seasons
Interlude
from the Kok River
11. Last of the longhouses
12. A delicate bamboo tongue
13. True love in love
14. Fermented monkey faeces
15. Perfect hosts
16. Old guard, young turks
17. True love and white rock
18. Insurgents in a landscape
19. True love and sudden death
20. Portraits
Notes
Bibliography
Index.