The writing of a memoir — especially one subtitled “A True Love Story” — presents an inherent challenge: the author’s self-revelation risks devolving into rank confession and undermining the larger ...

I said that I would find the place myself. I wanted to walk through the city, into Chinatown. “No, thank you. I do not want a ride, it’s all right.” The pause at the other end of the phone was so long ...

Before writing this review of Karen Connelly's memoir, Burmese Lessons, I read again portions of The Lizard Cage, her 2005 novel that went pretty much unnoticed when it came out in Canada, and then ...

A sensual love story set against Burma’s brutal dictatorship. Karen Connelly’s award-winning debut novel, The Lizard Cage, earned her comparisons to George Orwell and Nelson Mandela, and her second ...

'Good travel is like good reading," observes Canadian writer Karen Connelly in "Burmese Lessons: A True Love Story" (Nan A. Talese/ Doubleday, $27.95). "You go inside a new world and you cannot resist ...

It is not part of the Capital Fringe Festival, but "Sandaya: Burmese Lessons" would fit right in. The multimedia, cross-cultural piece at the Atlas Performing Arts Center qualifies as more of a ...

Karen Connelly’s passionate and poetic memoir begins with her arrival in Burma in 1996 at the age of 27. Brash, naïve and bubbling with confidence, she is enchanted by the country, but also determined ...

Laurel Conran filled a two-inch binder with vocabulary sheets for a class she offers Burmese refugees who work in a Howard County warehouse. The first lesson was on basic introductions; the second, on ...

Thus I learn my destiny. I will never leave this city. I will return to this street and find a house here and adopt children as beautiful as these ones, or as beautiful as these spirits, it doesn't ...

As the People's Republic of China approaches the 60th anniversary of its founding, Beijing has been unpleasantly surprised by the sudden outbreak of unrest on its long border with Burma. It's a lesson ...