Miss Burma

“Miss Burma” is an epic novel by Charmain Craig about love and war, ties of blood, and politics. Tough yet romantic, historically precise and multilayered, the novel takes us deep into the thick of the turbulent events in mid-20th-century Burma. On the eve of World War II—today’s Myanmar—Burma is a colony of the British Empire, and ahead of it lie harsh upheavals: the Japanese invasion and occupation, a nationalist regime, a long and brutal civil war…

A dramatic story of a country, reflected as if in a mirror in one family. Benni returns to Rangoon after studying in Calcutta and falls in love with Khin, a girl from the persecuted Karen ethnic minority. Fleeing the Japanese, the family runs through the jungles to eastern Burma. The childhood of their eldest daughter, the beauty Louise, will pass during the war—but then she is destined to become the first queen of beauty in Burma and gain worldwide fame. To fight for the freedom to be herself, Louise will need all her courage.

The plot of “Miss Burma” is based on the author Charmain Craig’s real family history. Press about the book: “A saga of several generations shows the origins of modern Burma—through British colonialism, Japanese occupation, and the civil wars of the independence era. Craig handles the novel’s historical scope skillfully, without sparing details in depicting the time. But above all, this is a novel about the power and feeling of family.” — The New Yorker “Like all good books, ‘Miss Burma’ takes root in the era and place it describes. In the novel, timeless questions of loyalty and betrayal, patriotism and identity are raised—yet at the center is the story of women trying to find their way to freedom.” — BBC