Burma Chronicles

by Guy Delisle, Helge Dascher (Translator)

Overview

THE POPULAR TRAVELOGUE NOW IN PAPERBACK

From the author of Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea and Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China comes Burma Chronicles, an informative look at a country that uses concealment and isolation as social control. It is drawn with Guy Delisle's minimal line, interspersed with wordless vignettes and moments of his distinctive slapstick humor.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770460256
Publisher:	Drawn & Quarterly
Publication date:	12/07/2010
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	700,828
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

GUY DELISLE spent a decade working in animation in Europe and Asia. In 2005–2006, he accompanied his wife, an administrator for Doctors Without Borders, on a fourteen-month posting in Burma. He is currently working on a graphic novel about a year spent in Jerusalem.

Editorial Reviews

Drawn with charming simplicity and brio, the book mixes traditional travelogue with glimmers of the unexpected.” —The New Yorker

From the Publisher

DeLisle's (Pyongyang) latest exploration of Asian life is probably the best possible argument against the ruling junta in the embattled (and now nearly obliterated) nation also known as Myanmar. Readers will find themselves initially shocked and surprised at the country's differences, then awestruck by the new traditions and finally in love with and yet enraged by Burmese daily life. DeLisle's wife is a French aid worker with Medecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), leaving DeLisle alone with their son, Louis, and his cartooning. DeLisle's style is simple but highly eloquent, and he tells more about the depth and breadth of the Burmese experience in the book's little nonfiction vignettes than he ever could in an artificially imposed narrative. Burma Chronicles is not merely a neat piece of cartooning but a valuable artifact of a repressive and highly destructive culture that curtails free speech with unparalleled tenacity. Like Joe Sacco's The Fixer and Safe Area Gorazde, DeLisle uses cartooning to dig into a story that demands to be told. (Sept.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

Insightful, illuminating memoir of a year under a totalitarian regime. In 2005-06, Delisle (Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China, 2006, etc.) accompanied his wife, who works as an administrator for Doctors Without Borders, to the country recognized by the United Nations as Myanmar. The United States and other democratic countries, however, still call it Burma, refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the military junta that seized power in 1989. As in the illustrator's previous adventures in China and North Korea (Pyongyang, 2005), the focus is less on politics and more on the lives of the people he encounters-though such lives are profoundly shaped by politics. He comes to accept checkpoints and censorship as routine, and he does his best to find a suitable home, survive with intermittent electricity and Internet access and take care of his toddler son Louis, whose charm transcends cultural borders. The author also fears malaria, bird flu and poisonous snakes, though the DWB medical community provides more comfort than much of the Burmese citizenry enjoys. Delisle writes and illustrates a children's booklet on HIV, an important contribution to a country in which heroin and prostitution are rampant. As in previous volumes, his eye for everyday detail combined with droll, matter-of-fact narration humanizes his 14-month experience in a country that might seem traumatic, even intolerable, in other hands. "There were no demands and no uprisings either," he writes. "Things are always very calm here, thanks to a regime that creates paralysis by fomenting fear on a daily basis." The undercurrents of Buddhism throughout the book culminate in his visit to a temple, where his meditation provestransformative. Though classified as a graphic novelist, Delisle has claimed territory all his own as a graphic-travel memoirist.

Kirkus Reviews