Sabal Phyu Nu

Artwork by Larissa Ribeiro That Friday morning, by the time the call for fajr rang out from the mosque in Old Kampala, Abraham was already speaking. Was making a proposal in fact. This was how their days began: Lu and Abraham usually awoke at twilight, and just as the muezzin launched his call, they got straight down to the business of the day. No need to thaw, to engage the niceties that presumably accompanied other people’s mornings, the Good Mornings, the How did you sleeps?

Sabal Phyu Nu is a Yangon-based fiction writer. Her short stories first appeared in leading literary journals in Myanmar, such as Shwe Amyu Tay and Khit Yanant. Her debut novel, Myauk Phya Ka Alwan Yadhi (The Sentimental Time in the Far North) set against the civil war in her homeland, Kachin State, won the 2013 Myanmar National Literary Award. She has gone on to publish a further six novels and is also well-known for her children’s literature series featuring Elni, an eight-year-old Myanmar girl.