In Great Britain, literary festivals can conjure comfortable images of middle-class audiences chatting over glasses of Chardonnay. But travel 5500 miles to the banks of the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar (Burma), and the phrase “literary festival” gains new significance. Because in a nation whose recent history is so contentious people can’t even agree on its name, words are a potent force for change.
The Irrawaddy Literary Festival [http://www.freewordonline.com/content/2013/01/burmas-literary-life/] takes place in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, on 1-3 February. Over two dozen international writers including Jung Chang, Pascal Khoo Thwe, and Vikram Seth, along with more than three dozen local authors, will take part in a celebration of writing and writers that was, until recently, unimaginable.
“We couldn’t have done it three years ago,” says Giles Fitzherbert, who co-organised the festival with Jane Heyn. “The political situation would have made it impossible.”
That’s how fast things are changing in the former British colony that spent most of the last half-century isolated from the rest of the world and under the thumb of a military junta. Most of what the West knows about Myanmar comes from those years: unarmed monks confronting soldiers, student protests, and the determined figure of one woman: Aung San Suu Kyi – freedom fighter, politician, and patron of the Irrawaddy Literary Festival.
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