Miss Burma
Charmaine Craig
Grove Press: 2017
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Reading Miss Burma on a return trip to Yangon, I found myself once again examining this city of crumbling mouldy walls and enormous pavement trees, now marked with shiny shopping malls and Ooredoo billboards. I remembered myself six years ago in Yangon, freshly arrived and already a collector of the fabulous stories of Myanmar’s past. Mythical stories of past colonial elegance and dictatorial secrecy that seemed always to exist just before I arrived in Myanmar. So close, yet tantalisingly out of reach.

Charmaine Craig’s Miss Burma seemed to promise a similarly nostalgic story of historic Myanmar. Based on the story of the author’s own grandparents, the novel portrays a marriage between a Jewish-Indian man, Benny, and a Karen woman, Khin, beginning in the 1940s with the awkward attempts of the newlyweds to understand each other’s differences. However, their marriage ultimately becomes one of conflict and betrayal.

By the end of the book, in the 1960s, they seem doomed to live out their lives together in either resentful tolerance or active conflict. Their daughter, Louisa, is twice crowned Miss Burma, hence giving the novel its name. As Louisa embodies multiple ethnicities and religions, the press claims her an icon of unity during a time when national politics is marked by diversity. She somehow personifies the possibility of a united Myanmar.

• Tags: Burma, Catriona Knapman, Charmaine Craig, Issue 13, Myanmar