Pascal Khoo Thwe

Pascal Khoo Thwe grew up in rural Burma, part of the Padaung tribe. His grandfather was the tribal chief, and Pascal grew up secure in his place in the world. His family was Catholic, yet still adhered to many of the traditional animist beliefs. Ghosts were a presence, for both good and ill. Someone who was murdered or died in an accident might become a green ghost, hence the title.

Pascal decides to become a priest and goes to a seminary, but eventually decides to pursue his love of English literature instead, and enrolls in college in Mandalay. The late 80s are a time of turmoil in Burma, however, and his studies are interrupted by student unrest against the regime. Eventually he must flee to the jungle to escape being arrested. But a chance meeting with a Cambridge don years earlier will change his fate and perhaps save his life.

Told in an unsentimental, straightforward manner, Thwe's memoir is a fascinating account of rural Burmese life, the impact of British colonization and its marriage with traditional beliefs, the complexity of ethnic relationships within Burmese society, and the educational system during Ne Win's regime. The plight of the students after the uprisings and their life in the jungle with the rebels was harrowing, and a situation about which I knew nothing. Although Thwe's emotional reserve makes the book almost academic in tone, his honest and insightful self-reflection make it a compelling read. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Burma/Myanmar.… (mere)

Transcendent Memoir of Universal Yearning

In a lifetime of reading, this memoir stands out as both strikingly unique and universal in its appeal. Pascal Khoo Thwe is the only Burmese hill tribesman to graduate from Cambridge (with honors!), and the events and “coincidences” that drove his life defy belief.

The book starts slowly, seeming to crawl, but the author takes such great pains to portray the world of his upbringing—where commerce between material and spiritual realms was taken for granted—that he gradually draws you out of your western, materialist worldview and into his: a world where his grandfather, just as he predicted, returns from the grave seven days after his death, clomps up the stairs, and listens to his wife’s entreaties that he leave the living in peace.

Any Cambridge graduate is entitled to a certain pride, but Khoo Thwe never succumbs to it, remaining humble and modest throughout: from his harrowing escape from murderous government soldiers, to being wracked by malaria, to his rescue by a Cambridge don, to his arrival in England, to graduating with honors.

While the author is the only person ever to ride this life trajectory, his story hums with universal resonance; for who can’t relate to a humble boy from the Padaung tribe, the scorn of majority Burmans, pursuing his love of literature all the way to the halls of Caius College? The yearning for a better life throbs in every human breast, and has rarely been so movingly rendered as here.… (mere)