INTRODUCTION

By Charles Angoff

The machinations behind military conquest - the
outright lying, the almost incredible cruelty, the fantastic
inhumanity, and, in the end, the senselessness of it all are
not confined to the Western World. The Eastern world is
just as adept. But there is another side to this phenomenon.
The desire for freedom is just as deep among the people of
the East as it is among the people of the West. They are just
as dedicated, just a selfless, just as noble in their efforts to
rid themselves of their oppressors.

In The Lion and the Sun Mr. Maurice D. Sassoon deals
fictionally with one of these struggles, that of Burma under
the yoke of British colonialism. He has picked a difficult
point of time in which to tell his tale. The period is that of
World War II. The People of the Rising Sun, through their
military, have set a huge propaganda machine in operation
whose chief principle is Asia for the Asiatics, and they have
promised all subjugated people total freedom once they, the
Japanese, have thrown out the British. Many of the Burmese
intellectuals and young radicals are taken in by the Japanese
propaganda and actually cooperate with their prospective
"liberators," who turn out, of course, to be even worse
oppressors than were the British.

Mr. Sassoon tells it all in terms of a novel about
"ordinary" people, men, women, children, business men,
students, drug traffickers, unwilling prostitutes and he
does it with great skill, so that the whole horrendous mess
of Burma's struggle for independence comes to life in every
major detail. The Lion and the Sun thus has much value not
only as a novel of tension and characterization, it also has
much value as a significant contribution to the history of the
post-World War II period.
Charles Angoff