Suu Kyi\u2019s remarkable life begins with that of her father, Aung San. The architect of Burma\u2019s independence, he was assassinated when she was only two. Suu Kyi grew up in India (where her mother served as ambassador), studied at Oxford, and worked for three years at the UN in New York. In 1972, she married Michael Aris, a British scholar. They had two sons, and for several years she lived as a self-described \u201chousewife\u201d\u2014but she never forgot that she was the daughter of Burma\u2019s national hero.<\/p>\n
In April 1988, Suu Kyi returned to Burma to nurse her sick mother. Within six months, she was leading the largest popular revolt in the country\u2019s history. She was put under house arrest by the regime, but her party won a landslide victory in the 1990 elections, which the regime refused to recognize. In 1991, still under arrest, she received the Nobel Peace Prize. Altogether, she has spent over fifteen years in detention and narrowly escaped assassination twice.<\/p>\n
Peter Popham distills five years of research\u2014including covert trips to Burma, meetings with Suu Kyi and her friends and family, and extracts from the unpublished diaries of her co-campaigner and former confidante Ma Thanegi\u2014into this vivid portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi, illuminating her public successes and private sorrows, her intellect and enduring sense of humor, her commitment to peaceful revolution, and the extreme price she has paid for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Suu Kyi\u2019s remarkable life begins with that of her father, Aung San. The architect of Burma\u2019s independence, he was assassinated when she was only two. Suu Kyi grew up in India (where her mother served as ambassador), studied at Oxford, … Continue reading