by Jack Doyle

PERFECT HOSTAGE: THE LIFE OF AUNG SAN SUU KYI

Justin Wintle (Hutchinson, £18.99)

Since her party won Burma's national election in 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi has been denied her rightful post as Prime Minister of the small south-east Asian country where she was born.

The military junta which exploits and oppresses Burma's people keeps her under house arrest, muzzled, and alive only because they dare not kill her, a fate which has befallen a great many of her supporters.

Meanwhile, her country is isolated from the spread of economic growth across Asia that has lifted many millions out of poverty. It remains a gangster state, armed and protected by the Government-sponsored illegal trade in drugs. She remains, as she has since the elections, a figurehead for her people and their fight for freedom.

That much is well known, and compelling enough. What Justin Wintle's new biography captures in great detail and considerable length is the story and the character of the woman behind the image of a valiant, but so far unsuccessful fighter against tyranny.

It begins with a brisk history of the country, and tells the story of Suu Kyi's father, a general who led the negotiations for independence from Britain after the Second World War, but was assassinated by political rivals, before leading the reader through Suu Kyi's early life and her rise to prominence. She married Oxford don Michael Aris, and left him and her two sons for what was to have been a short visit to Burma.

Since her election success, her attempts to rid her country of the darkness that envelopes it have cost her a great deal in terms of her family and personal life, a fact that makes her single-minded effort all the more admirable.

Jack Doyle