Burmese literary festival

       The Irrawaddy Literary Festival was 28 to 30 March, and in The Guardian Margaret Simons reports on Water shortages, factions and free speech at Burma's Irrawaddy literary festival.
       Among her observations:

Very few Burmese writers are internationally known. The Asia-based literary agent Kelly Falconer, who attended the festival with some of her authors, acknowledges that Burma has yet to produce the book that defines its recent history in the international imagination. It has had no Solzhenitsyn, and no equivalent to Jung Chang's Wild Swans, which carried the Chinese story into popular awareness when that country began to open up.

Falconer says: "Who is going to write that book for Myanmar ? We are waiting to find out who they are, and we are waiting for Burmese writers to find out who we are." Because Burma has been so closed for so long, that there is hardly any awareness of what international literary recognition means. Writers have been working in a vacuum.

       While no doubt (?) such books need to be written, personally I have ... limited, at best, interest in: 'the book that defines its recent history in the international imagination'. (Indeed, I find the 'international imagination' -- and playing to it/writing for it -- rather suspect.) What I'm really curious about is what they produced or are producing -- especially what they're producing with 'hardly any awareness of what international literary recognition means', in that vacuum she's talking about. That sounds interesting, in this globalized world .....
       (Ever hopeful, there's been an index of Burmese Literature at the site for a while -- but, alas, there are still just two bona fide Burmese works of fiction to be found there. Here's hoping more gets translated soon.)