The book is replete with such passages, enabling the reader to feel, hear, and smell Kawthoolei. And indeed, we should be grateful for having been spared the pretension that much too frequently accompanies social science writing. Contra Barley, however, "feel", despite its crucial importance, is surely not the only end of the anthropological enterprise? Sociological and cultural analysis within the framework of a well-established discipline surely must also be given their due.

But let me not suggest that True and Love and Bartholomew is "just another travel book" -- albeit a very fine one. It is much more, particularly in that it sheds important new light, not so much on the politics of insurgency, but on its "domesticity". It illustrates how people -- not a few of them educated urban sophisticates -- order their day-to-day lives as citizens of a state that nobody else admits to exist, that has no urban base of any kind, and that is in constant threat of military suppression by the armed forces of a government that, despite its questionable morality and legality, does happen to command the ear of the international community.

Jonathan Falla, a trained nurse, describes for us his year (1986-87) with the Karen of Kawthoolei, where, with a brief from an independent U.K.-based organization, "Health Unlimited", to assess the people's medical needs, he carefully avoids overt association with the military wing of the Karen rebellion while living with and working alongside several of its key civilian administrators.

The story is told largely through the lives of Falla's principal Karen friends and associates. There is, first of all, the young True Love, an English-speaking, Rangoon-educated, urban sophisticate, who packs an M-16 and is never quite sure whether he is destined to serve the Karen cause as soldier or schoolteacher. There is Bartholomew, "a simple man", older, more traditional and more rurally-focused than True Love, but holding Kawthoolei's vital "health and welfare" portfolio and no less committed to the political goals of the Karen revolution. Then there are Edward and his wife, Ruth, passionate Karen nationalists but also lowland urban sophisticates, who more easily converse with one another in Burmese than in Karen, and there is Red Star, the hunter and tamer of wild elephants, and so on. Through the life-styles, the hopes and the fears of these very real men and women, we gain a precious insight into Karen lives and the Karen revolution, an insight denied to all but those who are prepared, like Falla, to brave the possible consequences of living for a time in a political entity that is internationally unrecognized and under more-or-less constant threat of complete annihilation. Jonathan Falla claims to be no apologist for Kawthoolei; indeed his view seems decidedly pessimistic:

... as the Burmese Army closes in, ... |Karen~ choices are horribly limited and many of them simply don't know what to do. Like decent people anywhere, most Karen just wish that the war would go away. In the meantime their villages are being burnt, their men shot and their women raped. Large numbers of them find themselves in that deadest of ends, a Thai refugee camp. The Karen cannot win their war.

But Falla, nonetheless, tells his story with great sympathy. Nothing that he writes dishonours the aspirations of the Karen nationalists of Kawthoolei; indeed his book is a fine tribute to their humanity.

Ohio State University Anthony R. Walker
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