FREEDOM FROM FEAR AND OTHER WRITINGS ...

FREEDOM FROM FEAR AND OTHER WRITINGS by Aung San Suu Kyi, edited by Michael Aris (Penguin: $12, illustrated). Although she was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to restore human rights in Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest in her native country, as she has for the past 28 months. This new volume, edited by her husband, reveals the extent of her intellectual work, including scholarly essays on literature written at Oxford and her noted biography of her father, Aung San, an important leader of the Burmese independence movement during and after World War II. A basic text on the history and culture of Burma, intended for juvenile Australian readers, provides valuable background information, but the most interesting section of the book is the stirring collection of speeches and political writings. Her eloquent pleas to continue the nonviolent struggle for freedom make it easy to understand why the repressive military junta in Myanmar seeks to silence Aung San Suu Kyi. In the essay “Freedom From Fear,” she declares, “Saints, it has been said, are the sinners who go on trying. So free men are the oppressed who go on trying and who in the process make themselves fit to bear the responsibilities and to uphold the disciplines which will maintain a free society.”