What We Are Reading Today: The River of Lost Footsteps

Author: Thant Myint-U

In “The River of Lost Footsteps,” Thant Myint-U tells the story of modern Burma, in part through a telling of his own family’s history, in an interwoven narrative that is by turns lyrical, dramatic, and appalling.

His maternal grandfather, U Thant, rose from being the schoolmaster of a small town in the Irrawaddy Delta to become the UN secretary-general in the 1960s.

On his father’s side, the author is descended from a long line of courtiers who served at Burma’s Court of Ava for nearly two centuries.