What my upcoming novel Wolf, is or is not about --

Htay Tint Poe Ziwa What my novel Wolf by KMKaung is and is not--

1.  It is a novel, not a factual account.
2.  It is not "about 1988".  The novel begins on the first day of the clampdown and continues to about 2010 approximately.
For a blow by blow account of 1988, Bertil Lintner's excellent Outrage already exists.
3.  It is not a biography of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi-- there are several bios already, the ones I like best being by Whitney Stewart and the one by Peter Popham
4.  As a novel, it follows a group of fictional characters as they try to go about their lives.
5.  I made the hero older than the usual 1988 generation as only then could I weave in earlier political watershed events so that it shows how his rebelliousness was formed.
6.  It is not a history of the overseas Burmese Democracy Movement.  Though I have looked on as a close bystander and fellow traveler, I would not consider such an assessment even though I have written short political commentary pieces.
7.  Real people appear in very short vignettes or cameo roles.
--The scenes with U Ba Nyein and U Chit Hlaing (Ko Ko Maung) I witnessed myself.
--The scene with Daw Suu giving a public speech is based on news photos.
--I was at a dinner at the then Govt House the year after Gen. Ne Win beat up a member of the Rangoon Univ. staff.  I was an invited guest because I defended my MA Thesis in Economics, on project selection in Poland and the interest rate, that year, and they invited everyone who had obtained an MA that year.

One thing you need to know is, you don't "own" Burma or the Movement or how the events are depicted.  If a French movie director can make a movie about The Lady, a Burmese-born writer can also write about her country of origin.
It is unfair to critique a book based on what you think it is about, without having read anything other than the short excerpts I have extracted and published here on FB.  
At least have the good grace to buy it when it comes out and then read it.  Then you can trash it anyway you wish.

21 formal reviewers really liked Wolf.  In class 13x4 classmates plus the members of 2 writers groups, totaling nearly 60 writers and analysts, not just "readers", liked it.  The 21 reviewers included about 5 Burmese including an anonymous reader inside Burma who read it in 2 days, and 2 bestselling authors (on the NYTS list, not in the Burmese market).  No one was paid by me or the publisher.


I included notes in a Q and A section at the back of the book.  Since it is my decision, I am not going to release that until the book is published.
I also included a note on the most controversial of the events, and end notes (as I did not want footnotes) on the sources for some pieces of info.

Some of my sources will always remain confidential.

As a genre, it is creative non-fiction or an historical novel, like John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and almost all of Michener's novels.

It is NOT a personal or personalized history of Burma like Thant Myint U's River of Lost Footsteps.

As to how I created the characters, you can see them later in the Q and A section of Wolf.

As to how I created conflict and climatic scenes, I read a lot of movie scripts on line.  I worked 3-4 years at Annenberg Center Theatres in Philadelphia just to see the plays and study them, and I wrote a play, Shaman, to learn how to write dialog and to move the action along fast, not to mention how to scene.

Shaman was a Pew finalist script the year it was written and was praised by renowned playwright Edward Albee.

I am particularly pleased that Albee liked it, as the fight scenes between Inn Inn and her party cadre husband are based, if not on the letter, on the emotions of Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf.

I based some of the scenes involving corpses on first person accounts told to me in formal interviews or in private conversation.

As to the non-question, "Aunty, your writing is full of corpses," I have nothing to say. 

Life is full of dead people. 

Kyi May Kaung (Ph.D.)
2-16-2014

posted on my Facebook pages.