Burma Comic
Sukumar Ranganathan -
Monday, November 24, 2008 10:52 AM
Under Cult Fiction
Take a Candian cartoonist with an eye for the peculiar and a tendency to end up in out-of-the-way places and then publish comic books about his experiences.
Put him in Burma (which is what governments that do not recognise that country's totalitarian regime call it; those like India who want some of the country's gas call it by its new name, Myanmar).
Guy Delisle's latest book is Burma Chronicles and it takes off just where his earlier books, Pyongyang: A Journey in Noth Korea and Shenzen: A Travelogue from China let off. Burma is pretty much like North Korea, only even more repressive a regime if one is to believe the little that is written about it in international media.
The issues Delisle addresses are real, and serious but he does so with a light touch that, stranegly enough, just manages to highlight their seriousness.
I especially liked this bit about the new capital.
