This is the extraordinary story of student Pascal Khoo Thwe. A member of a remote Burmese tribe famous for their « giraffe-necked women ». He is forced to flee into the jungle during the rise of the corrupt military dictatorship and the bloody repression of 1988.
It is not that he particularly likes revolution or being a fighter, but his lover has been arrested, raped and murdered by the armed forces. Pascal becomes a guerrilla fighter.
By chance, as a waiter in a restaurant of Mandalay, he had met dr. Ca/ey, a Cambridge don, and this meeting is going to change their lives for ever.
For a year Pascal lives in the jungle amidst terrible hardships and dangers, eating rats to survive, seeing his friends die. Till the day he is saved on the Thai border by dr. Casey who assists him in fleeing the guerrilla warfare and takes him to the hallowed world of Cambridge university.
This marvellous story says more about a brutal regime, backed for obvious economical and geostrategical reasons by China and Russia, than any learned book or article. It is a page-turner and a work of art, relating a deeply felt experience.
...