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Aung San Suu Kyi AC is a Burmese opposition politician and General Secretary of the National League for Democracy. In the 1990 general election, Suu Kyi was elected Prime Minister, as leader of the winning National League for Democracy party, which won 59% of the vote and 394 of 492 seats. She had, however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She has remained under house arrest in Myanmar for almost 14 out of the past 20 years. ... Read more

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The Lady is Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratically elected leader of Burma who's never been allowed to hold power. The military junta that has ruled the troubled country since 1962 has limited her contact with the outside world especially after she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Now, in 2002, she is given qualified release from house arrest. Sloan Walcott is determined to meet her. He has something to deliver.


Part-time smuggler, part-time art dealer and full-time rogue, Wolcott is a prominent resident of Bangkok's notorious expat community. The promise of quick money draws him to the Burmese capital, a city under siege from within. There he comes into possession of a camera belonging to a Japanese newspaper reporter killed in a suspicious car crash. The camera is loaded. Inside is one image of Suu Kyi riding in an automobile with a bullet hole in the rear window as reminder of the government-organized mob that attacked her in 1996. Another shows a seductive young woman with a singular tattoo.

The dead journalist's father makes Wolcott promise to deliver the first photograph to Suu Kyi personally and cautions him not to become obsessed with the figure in the other one. The pledge proves difficult to keep and the warning difficult to heed.

Customer Reviews (6)

Burma road trip
Given all the recent news from Burma, I found this novel to be quite interesting in its depiction of the country and some of its history. Burma is usually a forgotten part of Southeast Asia which is in itself tragic. I found this to be interesting.

An Author Who Captures the Essence of Asia through the Eyes of an Ex-Pat
Christopher G. Moore is a writer of immense talent and though he is not well known in this country, if he continues writing novels as rich in intrigue and atmosphere as WAITING FOR THE LADY, his moment will come.Writing in the vein of W. Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, and a dollop of Joseph Conrad and DH Lawrence (to mention the first that come to mind!), Moore knows how to sculpt a tale of intrigue while informing his reader about strange and exotic placesand the turbulent histories that influence his choice of story line.

Sloan and Hart are two longtime artist friends living in Thailand who stumble on a series of photographs associated with a dying promise that the photographs will be returned to the mysterious lady captured in an odd way.They two have co-authored (Sloan as a photographer, art as a writer) a book on the Chin people of Burma, a group of people known mostly for their tradition of tattooing the faces of the women with spider-like tattoos), and all indications point toward re-visiting their old haunts.The two travel to Myanmar (as Burma is called today), encounter old acquaintances who offer clues as to where their trek will best follow, and soon they are joined by Sarah - a woman writing her PhD on the tattoo symbolism of the Chin people!Sloan and Hart are also motivated on this trip to uncover Ming china, a source of potential fortune for these worldly guys.How the history of Myanmar influences their journey and leads the threesome into bizarre circumstance is the mode of intrigue and page-turning story that results.

Moore is at his best in creating situations and atmospheres and writing with an eloquent style: "Nothing is fixed in the past or the present. What we call actual emerges from a fog of many possibilities. Until we observe an event, the forces are fluid, everywhere at once, neither here nor there, diffused and open-ended.It is only afterwards that the witness gathers evidence and only then can anyone say that the event ever happened in precisely that way." If Moore has a flaw that could bear correcting it is in his tendency to become sidetracked by either words or events or tangential information that at times stops the story's propulsion.

This is a fascinating read, one that educates as well as entertains.When Moore elects to be comedic, he does so with aplomb, much in the way Shakespeare used comic relief to allow his audiences time to breathe from the dramas.Christopher G. Moore has written 18 books and if they all approach the quality of this novel, then he most assuredly deserves a wide audience in the USA.Where are the readers from the film studios scouting for terrific ideas for adventure films......?Grady Harp, August 05

unusual mystery
Rebeccasreads highly recommends WAITING FOR THE LADY as a hot & sweaty introduction to Christopher G. Moore's supercharged tales of smuggling, politics, sex & mayhem in Southeast Asia.

WAITING FOR THE LADY is enigmatic, often lyrical & a gripping read! High (if not noble) adventure in an exotic land!

& if you like it, do check out all his other books -- he's a writer with far too little exposure in the Western World.

The Real Heart And Soul Of Burma
I have been a diehard fan of Chris Moore since 1992 and that love never dies, particularly when you have the intellectual pleasure of reading something as striking as Waiting for the Lay. I think that even though it's not quite the same as a Vinnie Calvino PI novel or the Smiles trilogy, it's still one of his best books.
I've also never encountered one of Chris' novels where the story is done in first-person narrative but in this case, it works quite well as far as I'm concerned.
I have to admit that Patricia Naylor's commentary wasn't too pleasing because I think in many ways, she missed the entire point of the main character being the way he is. Is he a questionable, none-too-successful American expat living in Bangkok who might not necessarily be your best friend? Of course he is but that's what I think helps to make this tale unfold so beautifully--he's a hero who isn't and the time in Burma matures him greatly. No, he's no Vinnie Calvino or the expats living at the Thermae but that's half the appeal, liking a man you normally wouldn't like.
Then too, I guess Patricia must have seen a different Burma than what I encounter in Tachilek every time I do a visa run from Chiang Mai. Yes, indeed, the Burmese people are beautiful people who do their best to be open with you but I think Patricia has missed the grim reality that Burma is one of the most repressive hellholes on the planet and this is through the direction of such organizations as SLORC which cheerfully torture, rape, imprison, kill or use "inferiors" to step ahead of the army troops to "find" landmines along the borderlines and within the Golden Triangle. That's the Burma I know and I honestly feel Chris has covered it as truthfully as he can while still staying within the parameters of the story itself.
It's because of his skills that you get the story that hooks you on Page 1 and carries you through to the end. I reccomend this book to anyone who wants a revealing glimpse into Burma (it shall never be Myanmar to me unless Aung San Su Kyi wishes that herself as the legally-elected ruler of this country) as well as characterizations that may upset you but I promise will never bore you.

Another winner.............
I have to admit Christopher GMoore is my favourite contemporary writer. "Waiting for the Lady" was a slight departure from my previous experience of his work both in terms of characters and locations. However it was certainly no disappointment for that. As always there is a bitter-sweet edge to the narrative but the charm for me of this book, as with his whole body of work is the insight into the minds and the culture of South East Asia.

"Waiting for the Lady" goes a little further than Moores other work in exploring the dark side of the region and in particular the politics. It is not a polemic. It uses the political backdrop as the background for a very good yarn which adds to the tension and emotion.

Moore's work follows a tradition of writers such as Hemingway and Greene. It works on different levels. "Waiting for the Lady" does the same. It is political but not overtly. It describes the psyche and the soul of the place and those who inhabit it but again in a subtle way, as a means of context setting. Above all though it is a great read.

Anyone with a sense of adventure and an empathy for this part of the world will I am sure find this book enthralling.
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Customer Reviews (1)

Aung San Suu Kyi: Mastering Fear
Few countries give greater reason for concern than Burma, beleaguered as it is under a long-term military dictatorship and few individuals greater cause for compassion than Aung San Suu Kyi detained under all but permanent house arrest in Rangoon since 1989. Gandhians have especial cause to take the Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi to their hearts for, despite being under exceptional duress, she remains committed to nonviolence. In Richard Shannon's play The Lady of Burma, first performed at the Old Vic and then at this year's Edinburgh fringe, the Burmese actress Liana Mau Tan Gould awesomely recreates the life of Suu Kyi.

The play begins with Suu Kyi in the hospital wing of Insein prison, Rangoon's largest, following the atrocity at Depayin, still wearing blood-stained clothes, a bowl of dirty water in front of her. This is a riveting solo performance. We are to share Suu Kyi's memories of her life, both private and public. The central theme is the overcoming of fear. Burma itself is ruled by fear, with some 1,100 political prisoners, child soldiers, slave labour, ethnic cleansing of minorities, the perpetration of rape on ethnic women and children. Suu Kyi's message is simple; only by fighting fear can you be truly free. She had to overcome her childhood fear of the dark and its demons. Her mother was intolerant of fear: "if you were frightened you had to confront those fears instantly." There was to be a terrifying encounter in the early stages of her fight for democracy when she confronts an armed patrol with guns cocked ready to kill her but she walks on and the order is given to lower the rifles; "I faced the demons again and they were not there." She had mastered fear.

Her memories are much of her family. Born 19 June 1945 she can have no personal memories of her father, Aung San, the liberator of Burma, brutally assassinated 19 July 1947, though others can recall for her leaping into his arms and she is much comforted by a leading political ally telling her how proud he would have been of her struggle for democracy, for a Burma "free and under the law." It was to nurse her formidable mother, Daw Khin Kyi, struck down by a stroke, so strict in her own upbringing, that she returns to Burma from Oxford in 1988, though Suu Kyi realises she was always bound to return. She recalls the appalling death of her younger brother, Aung Li, drowned in the ornamental pond of their garden. She reflects on the joy of her marriage to Oxford don, Michael Aris, but also knows that the call of her people will have to take precedence over her husband and two sons and although Michael comes to Burma to help her recover from a 13 day hunger strike the regime will not give him entry to Burma in 1999 when he is dying from prostate cancer and she cannot risk leaving Burma to nurse him in England for the regime would never allow her to return. There is so much personal sacrifice she has to make for Burma's freedom.

It was when attending her mother in hospital that students approached her to take up the leadership of the struggle - one Maung Htoo tells her there is a planned uprising nation-wide for the 8th of the 8th on 1988 - but she is always painfully aware of the certainties of violent repression from the army. Then comes Burma's Amritsar massacre, the slaughter of peaceful protesters outside Rangoon's town hall and the murder of some three thousand in the following weeks. But Suu Kyi takes on the leadership and in the play we cut to her speech in front of the Shwedagon pagoda: "Our purpose is to show that the entire people entertain the keenest desire for a multi-party democratic system of government".

But there still remains "a gnawing fear that I might not measure up and worse that I will lead my people into mortal danger." So she takes on Ne Win's SLORC (The State Law and Order Restoration Council). House arrest follows, 20 July 1989, and her response of a 13 day hunger strike. Weirdly, SLORC sanction elections in 1990 which the National League for Democracy wins with a landslide on a manifesto of nonviolence; even the jailers of Insein vote NLD. But of course SLORC had no intention of honouring the election and Suu Kyi wonders if it had all been a trap. Leading figures of SLORC visit her in 1994, putting a case that economic progress had to precede political, tourism to the fore, but Suu Kyi merely reflects on the law of karma: "every act of violence done to another is done to himself". How difficult, she reflects, it is to make progress: "If we are truly to negotiate I have to advance their interests in step with my own". She is temporarily released from house arrest July 1995. SLORC gives way to SPDC (The State Peace and Development Council). General Soe Win, the murderer of students in Rangoon hospital in 1988 is promoted: he declaims "the SPDC will never talk to the NLD and will never hand over power".

The play ends with the utterly harrowing account of the Depayin atrocity, Suu Kyi stopped en route to a political meeting in the village of Depayin, shouted at as "foreigner", "whore'" dragged out of her car and beaten up, witness to the savage beating of her key political associate, U Tin Oo, to the clubbing to death of her followers. But her will is unbroken: "The hands that tore down the Berlin Wall released the flood that swept away sixty years of tyranny ... I have never lost hope. The time is near. It is coming".

Antony Copley ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Siempre!, published by Edicional Siempre on April 29, 1999. The length of the article is 848 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: Birmania: La terquedad de Suu Kyi.(laureada del Premio Nobel de Paz; lucha por libertad nacional)(TT: Burma: the obstinacy of Suu Kyi.)(TA: winner of Nobel Peace Prize; fight for national freedom)(Columna)
Author: Alejandro Prieto
Publication: Siempre! (Refereed)
Date: April 29, 1999
Publisher: Edicional Siempre
Volume: 45Issue: 2393Page: 56

Article Type: Columna

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Minding Your Body - Energy Vampires: Judith Orloff, MD, on how to deal with people who suck the life out of you. Diane Sawyer's Body of Work: Her friends say she's looking buff..and it's all thanks to Jim Karas. Features - An O Exclusive! Oprah Talks to the Central Park Jogger: The woman left for dead in New York's Central Park breaks her 13-year silence to tell us about her road back to life. Reaching for Strength: Forget John Wayne. Real strength questions itself and enables you do what's right. Strong at the Broken Places: Mark Matousek on how fragility can bcome the seeds of your strength. "Suffering Can Never Destroy Who You Really Are": How Martin Luther King Jr. kept going. "Evil Will Always Lose": Miep Gies risked everything to help Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis. Plus much, much more! ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from History Behind the Headlines, Vols. 1-6, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 5076 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Presents in-depth information on conflicts appearing in today's headlines. Users are provided with historical background and analysis to events to give a greater understanding of the politics, players, and layers of current affairs. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Canada and the World Backgrounder, published by Taylor Publishing Consultants Ltd. on May 1, 1997. The length of the article is 1387 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: Heart of darkness: it's hard to see leaders of countries that abuse their citizens as anything other than thoroughly evil people.(political repression in Myanmar, Iran)
Publication: Canada and the World Backgrounder (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 1997
Publisher: Taylor Publishing Consultants Ltd.
Volume: v62Issue: n6Page: p9(3)

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Children's book with full-color illustrations and stories about Lance Armstrong, Aung San Suu Kyi, Jackie Robinson, and Elanor Roosevelt ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Contemporary Southeast Asia, published by Thomson Gale on April 1, 2007. The length of the article is 8726 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the author: Keywords: Myanmar, Burma, elections, SLORC, NLD, constitution, democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, Saw Maung, U Nu.

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Title: The 1990 elections in Myanmar: broken promises or a failure of communication?
Author: Derek Tonkin
Publication: Contemporary Southeast Asia (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 29Issue: 1Page: 33(22)

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This digital document is an article from Sojourners Magazine, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2008. The length of the article is 692 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: Revolution of the spirit: Burma's resistance is not over.(NONVIOLENCE)
Author: Richard Deats
Publication: Sojourners Magazine (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2008
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 37Issue: 1Page: 9(1)

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