Waiting for the Lady

by Christopher G. Moore

The Lady is Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratically elected leader of Burma who's never been allowed to hold power. The military junta that has ruled the troubled country since 1962 has limited her contact with the outside world especially after she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Now, in 2002, she is given qualified release from house arrest. Sloan Walcott is determined to meet her. He has something to deliver. Part-time smuggler, part-time art dealer and full-time rogue, Wolcott is a prominent resident of Bangkok's notorious expat community. The promise of quick money draws him to the Burmese capital, a city under siege from within. There he comes into possession of a camera belonging to a Japanese newspaper reporter killed in a suspicious car crash. The camera is loaded. Inside is one image of Suu Kyi riding in an automobile with a bullet hole in the rear window as reminder of the government-organized mob that attacked her in 1996. Another shows a seductive young woman with a singular tattoo. The dead journalist's father makes Wolcott promise to deliver the first photograph to Suu Kyi personally and cautions him not to become obsessed with the figure in the other one. The pledge proves difficult to keep and the warning difficult to heed. Waiting for the Lady is a vivid novel of political and personal intrigue that draws on today's news and the author's fabled knowledge of the region. It is full of passion and heartache, laced with an intimate understanding of Southeast Asia's human and physical geography. Its descriptions of Rangoon and of the Burmese countryside far to the north call to mind George Orwell and Graham Greene. What they did for their times, Christopher G. Moore does for ours.

Paperback

First published March 1, 2003

About the author

Christopher G. Moore is a Canadian author who has lived in Thailand since 1988. Formerly a law professor at the University of British Columbia and a practicing lawyer, Moore has become a public figure in Southeast Asia, known for his novels and essays that have captured the spirit and social transformation of Southeast Asia over the past three decades.

Moore has written over 30 fiction and non-fiction books, including the Vincent Calvino novels which have won including the Shamus Award and German Critics Award and have been translated to over a dozen languages. Moore’s books and essays are a study of human nature, culture, power, justice, technological change and its implications on society and human rights.

Starting in 2017, the London-based Christopher G. Moore Foundation awards an annual literary prize to books advancing awareness on human rights. He’s also the founder of Changing Climate, Changing Lives Film Festival 2020.

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little slow to get going but my faith in Moore paid off.
This novel is loaded with history, mystery and an enchanting sense of place woven sublimely with great characters and a bittersweet story.
To me this is a modern day Quiet American or Burmese Days, with dashes of Hemingway.

[Peter B · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Lady is Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma which is now called Myanmar. She is to be released from prison and the narrator Sloan Walcott wants to be there. He is fifty three years old and wants to be somewhere important on his birthday. He takes his friend Hart—an unemployed pool player who is actually an author and they run into a girl who forms the third part of their travel group—except for the Burmese guy Aye Thit who is their travel guide. Actually, Sloan found a camera in a Burmese airport years ago and developed the film which showed pictures of Aung San in a car with bullet holes and one picture of a girl with a scorpion tattoo. He is really trying to find the girl or is really trying to make money by finding Ming vases or is really just trying to get away from his girlfriend for a while. He is a slob—drinks beer constantly and rolls a fat one on every second page and litters even when it is not necessary and Moore seems to be trying to create a 50’s stereotype PI image. The plot seems implausible but not having traveled in any of those areas I wouldn’t know. They land in Burma in an airstrip in which the jungle is encroaching---travel by broken down van in the dark to their hotel—go to a Museum of Drug Use which is the fanciest building in Rangoon and meet a tribe of Chin people about whom they had done a pictorial book years ago.
I kept reading because I invested time in it and ultimately met some interesting characters. I don’t know if the culture I met was real or not.

[Buffone · Rating 3 out of 5]

The lady of the title is primarily Aung San Suu Kyi, and the book tells the story of the protag-onists' quest to meet her in Myanmar. Sloan Wolcott is an expatriate, a 52 years old American now living in Bangkok. Being an affable narrator sometimes, he can change into a person not at all likeable in the next paragraph: prone to self-pity with an over-inflated view of his own worth.
Sometimes the book is uplifting and entertaining, but at other times the mystery keeps on remaining for the reader where this tale will detour or meander to next. Yet while the novel seems periodically pointless, it does have considerable charms. Nevertheless the both col-ourful, funny and tawdry details aren’t enough to push the writer’s circular story in any sort of narrative direction

[Mona · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hadn't read any books by this author and chose the book because I'm interested in reading about Burma and Aung San Suu Kyi. The story held my interest even though the language was certainly more salty than it needed it to be. My son told me that is how Moore's novels are. Good believable yarn. Would have given it five stars if it hadn't been quite so "salty" which is saying it nicely. I am a lady after all.

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having just returned from Myanmar, I'm interested in novels set in the country. The historical storyline about Kazuo's 19th photograph was very interesting and engaging but that story, frankly could have been a novella. What the author no doubt intends as character development for the three main characters was, for the most part, boring to read and useless to the main story. It was really so-so and I wouldn't recommend it unless your a Christopher Moore fan.

[Arielle Rittvo Kinder · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was ok and gave some context to the situation in Myanmar, but I thought the writing was "eh"

[Issi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The only real interest I had in this book is that it was set in Burma, it was very average.