The Lizard Cage

Who would have thought that a white woman from Canada would be able to create a suspenseful, compelling and believable story whose main characters are a Burmese political prisoner, his sometimes brutal jailors and fellow prisoners, an orphan boy, and a pen and notebook? Karen Connelly has done just that in The Lizard Cage (Vintage Canada), which she researched extensively and wrote with such skill that she manages to give us the background information we need without dropping out of the narrative with long explanations. The book starts slowly with an introductory chapter that might be better placed at the end of the book, but once the main story gets going the reader is drawn deeper and deeper into a tightly constructed tale that will keep you reading long into the night.