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In A Little Kingdom

Perry Stieglitz
Reviewed by By Patricia Lee Dorff
Spring 1991
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Perry Stieglitz
Sharpe
1990
230 pp.

Stieglitz first visited Laos in 1959 on a Fulbright grant to teach English at a local lycée. He returned in 1961 as a State Department foreign service officer and would spend the rest of his life closely involved with the politics, history and culture of Laos, not least because he married in 1968 the daughter of Prince Souvanna Phouma, one of three princes battling for political control. His book is an account of those turbulent years-part travel memoir, part political history and part personal narrative. The combination is a touching and sad tribute to a country caught up in the Cold War years.

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