Why did I love this book?
A Paduang tribesman journeys from a distant mountain village to Mandalay to become a university student but soon finds himself caught up in protests against the military dictatorship. He becomes a revolutionary and fights in harrowing battles. Somehow through it all, he escapes and, thanks to a random friendship with a stranger, journeys to England to study at Cambridge University. Exquisitely detailed and lyrically written, his memoir stands as a fine work of literature, rare and utterly unique. Consider it a travel memoir in reverse.
2 authors picked From the Land of Green Ghosts as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
The astonishing story of a young man's upbringing in a remote tribal village in Burma and his journey from his strife-torn country to the tranquil quads of Cambridge.
In lyrical prose, Pascal Khoo Thwe describes his childhood as a member of the Padaung hill tribe, where ancestor worship and communion with spirits blended with the tribe's recent conversion to Christianity. In the 1930s, Pascal's grandfather captured an Italian Jesuit, mistaking him for a giant or a wild beast; the Jesuit in turn converted the tribe. (The Padaung are famous for their 'giraffe women' - so-called because their necks are ritually…
