Nationality Burmese Role Writer | Name Ma Thanegi Occupation Author | |
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Born 1946 ( 1946 ) Burma Books Nor Iron Bars a Cage, Ginger Salad and Water Wafers | ||
Residence Yangon, Myanmar (Burma) | ||
Ma Thanegi (Burmese: မသိင်္ဂီ; born 1946) is a Burmese writer, best known for her numerous English works on various Burmese topics, including travel, history and cuisine. She is a contributing editor to the Myanmar Times and editor of Enchanting Myanmar, a travel magazine. She is also an English translator, having translated the works of Khin Hnin Yu and other Burmese writers into English.
Thanegi attended Methodist English High School, the Rangoon State School of Fine Arts, the Rangoon Institute of Economics, and Institute of Foreign Languages, where she studied German and French.
Thanegi served as Aung San Suu Kyi's personal assistant before her arrest in 1989, following the 8888 Uprising. She served a prison term at Insein Jail until her release in 1992. She fell out of favor among the Burmese pro-democracy movement for her challenge to the National League for Democracy's doctrine that economic sanctions and tourism boycotts were harming the country's poor majority. In 1997, she published "The Burmese Fairy Tale," an essay in the Far Eastern Economic Review, claiming that sanctions hurt the Burmese people without effectively changing the Burmese regime (then known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council)'s behavior.