At the heart of Ana Popescu's existence is the love for her son. He is the only thing that makes life in Ceausescu's Romania tolerable. In their mean little flat they have created a private world in which no harm can come to them. But Ana is haunted by a mystery in her own past, and by her awareness under a totalitarian regime the soul can gradually be corrupted. At last as incident at Ion's school convinces her she must send him away. When she seizes the chance to give Ion freedom, Ana unwittingly propels him beyond bureaucracy into an underworld of refugees and migrants. Attempting to follow, she is caught and thrown into prison. Then the collapse of communism and the overthrow of Ceausescu rekindle her hope for a future, as she leaves her country for the first time and embarks on a quest to reclaim her lost child. The achievement of Bel Mooney's powerful and ambitious new novel, as it moves across the changing face of contemporary Europe, is that it takes us inside the lives of people caught up in the flood tide of political events. A story of sacrifice, loss and love, it is a moving and triumphant celebration of the power and immutability of the bonds of motherhood and is also about one of the most pressing humanitarian issues of our age.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

For nearly two decades Western governments and a growing activist community have been frustrated in their attempts to bring about a freer and more democratic Burma—through sanctions and tourist boycotts—only to see an apparent slide toward even harsher dictatorship. But what do we really know about Burma and its history? And what can Burma's past tell us about the present and even its future? 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. And 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. Through their stories and others, he portrays Burma's rise and decline in the modern world, from the time of Portuguese pirates and renegade Mughal princes through the decades of British colonialism, the devastation of World War II, and a sixty-year civil war that continues today and is the longest-running war anywhere in the world. The River of Lost Footsteps is a work both personal and global, a distinctive contribution that makes Burma accessible and enthralling.

Lyonel Trouillot?s harrowing novel depicts a night of blazing violence in modern-day Port-au-Prince and recalls hundreds of years of violence stretching back even before the birth of Haiti in the fires of revolution. Three narrators?a madam, a taxi driver, and a post office employee?describe in almost hallucinatory terms the escalating chaos of a bloody uprising that pits the partisans of the Prophet against the murderous might of the great dictator Deceased Forever-Immortal. ø The drama of promise and betrayal in Haitian life inform?s Street of Lost Footsteps with the grim irony and savage tenderness characteristic of writers for whom the repetitiveness of history has gone beyond tragedy, through farce, and on into insanity. With impressive originality and touching immediacy, Trouillot explores the nature of political oppression, memory, and truth.

Lyonel Trouillot?s harrowing novel depicts a night of blazing violence in modern-day Port-au-Prince and recalls hundreds of years of violence stretching back even before the birth of Haiti in the fires of revolution. Three narrators?a madam, a taxi driver, and a post office employee?describe in almost hallucinatory terms the escalating chaos of a bloody uprising that pits the partisans of the Prophet against the murderous might of the great dictator Deceased Forever-Immortal. ø The drama of promise and betrayal in Haitian life inform?s Street of Lost Footsteps with the grim irony and savage tenderness characteristic of writers for whom the repetitiveness of history has gone beyond tragedy, through farce, and on into insanity. With impressive originality and touching immediacy, Trouillot explores the nature of political oppression, memory, and truth.