Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66909 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-30
• Released on: 2008-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

From Publishers Weekly
DeLisle's (Pyongyang) latest exploration of Asian life is probably the best possible argument against the ruling junta in the embattled (and now nearly obliterated) nation also known as Myanmar. Readers will find themselves initially shocked and surprised at the country's differences, then awestruck by the new traditions and finally in love with and yet enraged by Burmese daily life. DeLisle's wife is a French aid worker with Medecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), leaving DeLisle alone with their son, Louis, and his cartooning. DeLisle's style is simple but highly eloquent, and he tells more about the depth and breadth of the Burmese experience in the book's little nonfiction vignettes than he ever could in an artificially imposed narrative. Burma Chronicles is not merely a neat piece of cartooning but a valuable artifact of a repressive and highly destructive culture that curtails free speech with unparalleled tenacity. Like Joe Sacco's The Fixer and Safe Area Gorazde, DeLisle uses cartooning to dig into a story that demands to be told. (Sept.)
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From The New Yorker
In previous graphic memoirs, Delisle, a Qu�b�cois animator, has documented in spare, whimsical black-and-white line drawings his visits to North Korea and China. Here, he turns his hand to another authoritarian Asian regime, Burma, where he spent a year after the 2004 tsunami with his wife and their infant son. Drawn with charming simplicity and brio, the book mixes traditional travelogue with glimmers of the unexpected, as when Delisle notes that in the local newspaper �some articles contain nothing but a list of officials present at a given event,� or discovers a lit light bulb placed in a drawer to keep paper dry during monsoon season. Delisle takes a whimsical approach but also logs political realities�the increasing difficulty of getting travel permits for humanitarian work, the abrupt banishment of foreign videos from stores.
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Review

Customer Reviews

Exile In Guyville
This is Delise's richest book yet, and probably his most detailed. It's another travel journal, similar to Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea and Shenzhen: A Travelogue From China, this time with a Doctors Without Borders-style group in Burma. Even though his drawings are deliciously simple and compact, with his pen, Delise evokes a real sense of place and the culture, character, and quirks of the people. I love his work.

Touching and hilarious.
If you have spent any time in Burma, this book will resonate on so many levels.

Bountiful Burma
As accessible & observant & witty & surprising & engrossing & gracefully uninflected as PYONGYANG & SHANZHEN, which is high praise indeed. A personal, recognizable look @ an exotic place & way of life. There's nothing like these books. Totally unexpected & fascinating.