Review: Deal or No Deal...
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 24, 2013
Jonathon Nichols is an Australian businessman who writes with considerable business insight about the very slow capitalist transformation of Myanmar. I’ve read another book of his, the non-fiction Puk Time Stories & Business Lessons on How to Make it Happen in Myanmar, which covered his own misadventures while seeing Myanmar as a grand opportunity in a brand new market, which was an interesting eye opening on a country that had been closed to the West for so long. In My My Myanmar, Nichols writes a fictional tale of two very different Westerners, the Hare and the Tortoise, who team up to try and make money off real estate deals. Here the business dealings are as interesting and sometimes hair raising in the non-fiction Puk Time, but Nichols writing in an almost allegorical way, according his characters (such as the Hare and the Tortoise) symbolic names, which I found a little unsettling, particularly the names given to the Myanmarese. By reading about people as symbols, rather than individuals, I found myself a little dislocated from the novel. Still, Myanmar and its labyrinthine systems is a fascinating place, and I can see why Nichols is drawn to writing about it, but I do wonder if his style isn’t more suited to non-fiction. Regardless, his bouncy, fast moving narrative is very appealing, and anyone interested in living and working in Myanmar (rather than touristing) will find this a useful read.