From the Land of Green Ghosts:
A Burmese Odyssey
by Pascal Khoo Thwe

Reviewed by James D. Rosenthal

Fate, coincidence, some divine providence, or just plain chance? Perhaps more than one of these played a part in the remarkable story of a young man’s journey from a small remote hill tribe in Burma to the hallowed halls of Cambridge University. Winner of the 2002 Kiriyama Nonfiction Prize, From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey is author Pascal Khoo Thwe’s first book.

Khoo Thwe was born into the Padaung tribe, one of the several small but distinct minorities in Burma’s mountainous Shan state region. His tribe was unique in many ways, not least because its women traditionally wore metal rings around their elongated necks as a sign of beauty. Much of the tribe, including Khoo Thwe’s family, was Catholic—also unusual in overwhemingly Buddhist Burma.

Khoo Thwe’s Catholic background was important to him and was to prove especially valuable to his education. But he was also brought up fully immersed in his own tribal culture, including its animist and shamanist traditions as well as its distinct customs, language, everyday life, and mistrust of the “lowland” ethnic Burman majority. The first part of his book describes with unusual clarity and insight this rather eclectic mix and how he himself observed and absorbed it.

His strong academic record at a Catholic seminary got him to Mandalay University, where his decision to major in English literature was as fortuitous as it was fateful. Waiting on tables at a local restaurant to support himself, he by chance struck up a conversation with some British tourists. Struck by his ability to discuss James Joyce, among other British writers, they mentioned him to another visitor to the region, Cambridge don Dr. John Casey, who happened to be passing through Mandalay shortly thereafter. Casey, a noted professor of literature, looked him up and was duly impressed. The meeting began an extended, if at times tenuous, contact between the two that ultimately led to Casey arranging for Khoo Thwe to come to Cambridge.

But it was not to be quite that simple. In the meantime, Khoo Thwe had become politicized by the brutalities of the Ne Win regime and joined the student protests that led to brutal crackdowns and the closing of all universities in 1988. He eluded the Burmese military and police pursuing him and joined the ranks of anti-regime rebels fighting along the Thai border. His luck continued to hold there, as he survived battle wounds, a poisonous snake bite, and severe malaria attacks and other illnesses until, again by chance, he was able to renew his contact with Casey and ultimately make his way out.

Thus, this book is first and foremost an exciting adventure story, a true personal “odyssey” as the title indicates. But it is much more. It is a masterly commentary on Burma itself—its beauty and history, its spiritual and ethnic diversity, its current political agony. It is also a unique cross-cultural study, as Khoo Thwe leads us through his improbable journey from isolated Padaung tribal village to the more broadly “Burmese” university and rebel ranks, then finally to the even more exotic (for him) English academic life. He writes of the experience with great skill, perception, and good nature, and he offers a refreshing new look at both his own country and his new surroundings in the West.

As he relates in an interesting epilogue, fate or coincidence did not stop for him even there. At a small private art gallery in Suffolk he is shown a brass bust of a woman “with an extraordinarily long neck and wearing a full complement of neck rings.” Asked if it reminded him of anyone, he immediately recognized her—it was his own grandmother!