Toward the end of this captivating memoir the author confesses that while studying at Cambridge, "Sometimes I locked myself up in my room for three or four days, just to have a sense of what it was like to be imprisoned, and as a sort of penance for all my luckless friends who were locked up in noxious prisons in Burma." This is the improbable and riveting tale of a Padaung hill tribesman who left his idyllic backwater to study in Mandalay and found himself caught up in the tumultuous political events of the day. It is awe-inspiring story of perseverance against incredible odds, leavened by the author's humor and lyrical prose.
Thwe recalls the military coup d'etat in 1988: "There was one uncanny reaction to the coup-dogs that howled the whole night. The first sign of the new regime's good intentions was not long in coming. That night the tanks rolled into the cities and massacred a thousand protesters." So began the transformation of a naive student into a reluctant rebel fighting in the jungles of the Shan state against one of the world's most notoriously brutal regimes.
He recalls rebels taunting the government soldiers about their widespread practice of coercing local villagers into forced labor. Told that they are volunteers, the rebels shout across the battlefield, "Pretty impressive that they volunteer to wear chains, volunteer to walk through minefields, volunteer to be blown to bits."