In an interview on Burma

Let’s move on to No Time for Dreams by San San Tin, which is a rare voice to come out of Burma given all the restrictions for local people there.

Yes, absolutely, and that is why I have chosen a book like this because it is so unusual to have Burmese voices from inside Burma writing about their experiences of living there. Sometimes we hear voices from along the border or we hear dissident voices from outside Burma but it is very unusual to hear from people who have experienced what it is like to grow up inside the country. 

San San Tin is a poet and this is the odyssey of her attempt at self-expression and fulfilment inside a military dictatorship. The way she tries to do that is to chronicle the period under General Ne Win who was the dictator who started this arc of military rule and she chronicled how the vestiges of colonial rule disappeared as foreign influence was systematically eradicated in Burma. She is inspired by literature and by all the things she has learnt but she doesn’t have any outlet for any of it. So she works on a government newspaper and learns about censorship and propaganda and how the government tries to control the news. 

But she can’t publish her work without going through the censorship board and, in the end, she has to leave Burma when she realises she can’t exist in this environment with the dreams that she has – hence the title, No Time for Dreams. She actually ends up in the US where she works at a Burmese language radio station sending news into Burma. So she has come full circle in a way...