See here for methodology; I am excluding books not actually set in Myanmar/Burma, as noted below.
Title | Author | Goodreads raters | LibraryThing owners |
Saving Fish from Drowning | Amy Tan | 32,428 | 4,796 |
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats / Das Herzenhören | Jan-Philipp Sendker | 84,182 | 1,757 |
Burmese Days | George Orwell | 29,398 | 3,802 |
The Piano Tuner | Daniel Mason | 14,615 | 2,961 |
Burma Chronicles | Guy Delisle | 13,412 | 904 |
Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II | Vicki Constantine Croke | 10,885 | 535 |
A Well-Tempered Heart / Herzenstimmen | Jan-Philipp Sendker | 12,054 | 284 |
Finding George Orwell in Burma | Emma Larkin | 3,602 | 734 |
As is so often the case, it’s a shame that this list is all about Westerners encountering Myanmar. The top authors from the country, a bit further down the table, are Pascal Khoo Thwe, Thant Myint-U and Aung San Suu Kyi. The only one on the list that I have read is Guy Delisle’s graphic novel.
I disqualified three books: The Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Richard Flanagan, seems to be more than half in Australia; The Glass Palace, by Amitav Ghosh, seems to have enough excursions to India and Malay(si)a to push the Burmese sections below 50%; and A Fortune-Teller Told Me / Un indovino mi disse, by Tiziano Terrari, is set all over Asia.
Next up: Kenya.