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The definitive biography of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s pro-democracy leader.
Until she was released in November 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi had been under house arrest in Burma for fourteen of the previous twenty years. She was already confined to her home when the party she co-founded and led, the National League for Democracy, won a landslide victory in a general election in 1990. The result was never acknowledged by the military regime in power for many decades.
Yet, headline, tragic events have happened in Burma in recent years: the brutally put down uprising of the monks and nuns in 2007, the devastation left by Cyclone Nargis in 2008, and then Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial following the entry into her home of an American intruder who swam across a lake to reach her. Since then there have been sham elections held in November 2010, and ‘Daw Suu’ (as the Nobel Peace Prize laureate is known) was released into an uneasy stand off with the junta.
Praised all over the world for her martyrdom, a matchless emblem of Buddhist fortitude and good humour to her people, there is no public figure in the world today who can compare to her. Yet no book has yet been written that does justice to her extraordinary story: brought up mostly in India, settled in N. Oxford with her English scholar husband and two sons, called back to Burma to look after her sick mother, then caught up in a revolutionary uprising for which she became leader, yet trapped inside the country – never to see her husband again.
The Lady and the Peacock is the first, accessible biography of Aung San Suu Kyi. It will become the definitive work on this extraordinary woman, of whom Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said: ‘Aung San Suu Kyi is a remarkable and courageous human being. Listen to her voice and be inspired…’
In The Press
'The Lady and the Peacock is a masterly narration of the life of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi; sympathetic and yet not hagiographical, for it asks the awkward questions of her often cynical detractors. The picture that emerges is of an amazing human being, ready to face down the military junta of her motherland with their savage brutality with remarkable courage, drawing her strength from her Buddhist spirituality and her genealogy. She makes one proud to be human in her company. What a gift to our world and what a splendid account of it in this book. We are deeply indebted to Peter Popham for such a superb account.'
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"Peter Popham has succeeded in writing the most comprehensive, accessible, honest and fair biography of Aung San Suu Kyi to date, blowing away all previous efforts. Combining the story of Aung San Suu Kyi's truly extraordinary courage, leadership and moral authority with an insight into her very human characteristics, The Lady and The Peacock will leave the reader inspired by her life and motivated to support her continuing struggle for freedom."
Benedict Rogers, author of Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma's Tyrant.
'If you have been following the heroic stand of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi throughout her years of imprisonment, this is the book for you. If you have never heard of her, you can do no better than seize on this account of her incredible determination in this masterful assessment by Peter Popham, beautifully written and compelling in every aspect.' Joanna Lumley (actress)
