Reading in 2021: A selection

  After a first pandemic year in which I buried myself in novels and non-fiction for much of the time I wasn’t working, I didn’t expect to read more books in 2021. But that’s what happened. What follows is a sampling, with the usual eclectic mix of subject matter. If you’re looking for titles about the world’s biggest health issue, though, you’ve come to the wrong place: I didn’t read a single book about the…

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Learning to Cope in a ‘Trauma Society’

  Meet Saw Thet Tun. As a student in 1988, he was involved in the pro-democracy movement. A few years later, the authorities caught up with him. Now, look at his right eye. Looks normal, right? But it's useless. He lost all its vision during the nineteen years he spent as a political prisoner of the dreaded SLORC/SPDC military regimes. Saw Thet Tun didn’t explain exactly how he lost the eye when he spoke recently to…

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