Wilson's Fiction 03/01/08

Publishers Weekly 11/13/06

Kirkus Review 12/01/06

http://www.flr.follett.com/search?SID...

The lizard cage is the first novel by a Canadian author and poet Karen Connelly--is set in modern day Myanmar or Burma--mostly inside a prison. The story revovles around Teza--a high profile politicial prisoner living in a solitary cell. As the story begins he's been there for seven years of a 20 year sentence. Teza is an opponent of the military dictatorship that rules the country. Before his incarceration he had been a popular musician and songwriter. When the government under international pressure grudingly allows the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi freedom from her house arrest at the same time at the prison where Teza is kept a plan is put in place to entrap Teza and other political prisoners into committing crimes against the state--possession of forbidden materials--pens and papers and the subsequent protests these materials are used for. Teza himself almost falls into the trap--set up by a criminal non-political trustee Sein Yun trying to reduce his sentence. Having eaten his protest at the last possible moment he flings the pen through an opening high above his head in his cell. The brutal guard known as Handsome who is Sein Yun's handler is enraged when the materials cannot be found. Teza is the most important of all the politicals and he beats Teza savagely--breaking ribs, toes and his jaw in several places so that for the rest of the novel Teza will live in the prison infirmirary.

As it happens the pen that Teza discards at the last moment is picked up by a young boy known as Nyi Lay (little brother)--an orphan whose father was a prison guard and having nowhere else to go lives and roams on the prison grounds as a kind of gofer for guards and prisoners particularly a gang boss Tan-see Tiger. As the fallout from the missing pen circles around the prison yard--Handsome under pressure from the Chief Warden is determined to find it. After being berated by the Warden--Handsome injures his knee going down a stairway. For the next several days he leads a number of more and more reluctant prison guards on a fruitless search--these guards who for the most part resent Handsome for both his brutality and his ambition to be transferred to Military Intelligence--to become a torturer.

In the meantime another guard Chit Naing is assigned to Teza in the prison infirmirary. Naing had formerly been assigned to Teza in solitary. Naing is much different from Handsome--very empathetic towards Teza. Naing recruits Nyi Lay to bring Teza his meals. It is in here that both Chit Naing and Teza come up with their own plan to take Nyi Lay out of the prison setting where he's in danger from guards and inmates and set him in a monastery school where he can learn to read and write.

Events though are closing in--the criminal trustee Sein Yun has an epiphany and figures it out that Nyi Lay has the pen--information that he passes along to Handsome who first physically attacks and then destroys the small shed and most of the possessions of Nyi Lay--no pen though--and then in a confrontation with Chit Naing he reinjures his knee. For a small period of time while Handsome recovers the boy is granted a reprieve and in that time Chit Naing and Teza arrange for his stay in the monastery. Teza has also figured a way out of the prison for himself. He will go on hunger strike to whenever--until death takes him out.

Connelly uses this prison as a metaphor for the state of the country. It is very well written and plotted and the story moves at an even and fluid pace. It is an intriguing look at a country and its situation as well--which I don't believe unfortunately has changed all that much since the book was first published in 2005. If there is a quibble I have with it--the darker characters involved are pretty irredeemable when it comes to positive human qualites while the better characters seem almost too good. To put it another way she could use a bit more shadings of gray between the good and the bad. The characterizations on their own do seem realistic enough though so it's not something that is a major problem. It's more of a minor flaw. All in all a very good work. It's somewhere between a 4 and a 4 and a half so I gave it the latter. ( )

Another book which has beauty admist ugliness (like Bel Canto) - I was riveted the entire story. While I read this over a year ago the story and characters stayed with me - the buddhist concept of being able to focus on the smallest things to rise above daily horror was fascinating. ( )

Teza, a singer for a protest movement against the Burma/Myanmar government, was arrested in 1988 and sentenced to 20-years of solitary confinement as a high-profile political prisoner. When we meet Teza he has been in a windowless prison room alone for seven years, desperately trying to stay sane, and alive, and to philosophically, through Buddhism, come to terms with his life. And so the story begins.

This is a political book. Connelly, who has published poetry and a non-fiction book on Thailand, has spent at least 10 years studying Burma, first inside, and later on the Burma-Thai border. She has also become an activist against the repressive isolationist Burmese government. And this book is a statement about the condition of Burma. Political messages are often fatal to works of art. Certainly this book has some flaws, for example the jailers in general seemed too simplified, like stock characters. But despite that, it’s a beautiful work, elegantly constructed, with some memorable characters. ( )

Here is an intellectually stimulating book that turns into a nerve-wracking page turner. It tells the story of a political dissident in Burma, his response to his incarceration in a brutal prison system, and the effects of the prison upon several other characters, including a young boy, two jailers and several prisoners. Coupled with the Buddhist cultural context, the story provides powerful insights into issues of political resistance, conscience and the significance of communication in any repressive regime. The writing is very effective, often lyrical, but never dense. Readers may be reminded of [The Kite Runner], however I found this story deeper and more thought-provoking, and the characters more compelling. ( )