On 2 May 2008 tropical cyclone Nargis struck Burma with such force that even today nobody knows how many people were killed, although the ruling military junta reported exactly how many chickens died. Here is the special quality of this regime, as Emma Larkin writes in her latest evocative book: ‘Events happen in Burma, and then they are systematically unhappened.’ Unhappened is a good word, and very Orwellian, an echo perhaps of Larkin’s wonderful previous book on Orwell’s early years in Burma.

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