About the book: 2021 / A dramatic and touching story of a family caught in the middle of one of the most brutal storms of the 20th century. A novel about love and war, colonialism, ethnicity and blood ties. Through the story of the couple Benny and Khin and their daughter Louise, the reader learns about the fate of an entire country - Burma. After studying in Calcutta, Benny settled in Rangoon, then part of the British Empire, and fell in love with Khin, a girl from the Karen people, a persecuted ethnic minority. When World War II hits Southeast Asia, Benny and Khin are forced to flee the Japanese to eastern Burma. After the war, the British authorities will make a deal with the Burmese nationalists, who will gain control of the country. And a long civil war will begin. Louise, Benny and Khin's eldest daughter, would have a turbulent and dangerous wartime childhood, but shortly before the fall of the dictatorship she would become Burma's first beauty queen. And although fame will fall on the girl and she will find herself in the center of attention of the whole country, she will have to maneuver between the new world and the old one, in which the past of her people is hidden. The novel is based on the story of the writer's relatives, her grandparents.