The Lizard Cage

Canadian writer Karen Connelly’s debut novel, The Lizard Cage (2007, provides readers with an intimate glimpse into the lives of Burmese prisoners. The novel takes its title from the nickname for a prison that stood on the outskirts of Rangoon in the 1990s. The book was a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize for Fiction, an award that recognizes books about South Asia and the Pacific Rim. Connelly tells the story with such precision as it is based on her own experiences. She spent two years living on the Thai-Burmese border surrounded by exiles and dissidents.

Connelly’s novel centers on Teza, also known as the Singer or the Songbird. When the young man is first introduced, he is on the verge of starvation and spiraling into madness due to insufferable loneliness. He is seven years into a twenty-year sentence in solitary confinement. After gaining popularity and recognition for his protest songs speaking out against the Burmese government, Teza is arrested by the secret police. He finds out that his musical style has not been appreciated by all, getting him into hot water with ruling generals who call themselves the State Law and Order Restoration Council, renaming the country Myanmar.

The police arrest Teza as well as his father, a physician who is also outspoken in his opposition of the new regime. Fearing for his own life, Teza’s younger brother escapes into the jungle, planning to continue to fight against the ruling party and its persecution of his family. Teza’s mother sends him packages of food that help to keep him alive and keep his spirits up during his incarceration.



Inside the prison, Teza befriends Zaw Gyi, a young Burmese orphan and prison worker. Twelve-year-old Zaw Gyi wears a T-shirt that says “Free El Salvador,” leading Teza to refer to him by this nickname. Zaw Gyi has his own hut on the prison grounds, which he shares with a beetle and a lizard. He occupies himself by doing errands around the prison in exchange for food. Most of the prisoners refer to him as “rat killer,” one of the many services he provides, offering to add protein to the normally nutrient-deficient boiled rice that the prisoners are forced to survive on.

Teza grows concerned for his new friend whom, he notices, is in grave danger from the many people in the prison who threaten his life on a regular basis. He is beaten and almost drowned, and even the prison cook tries to sexually assault him. However, Teza soon realizes that a boy like this does not have very many other options. As Zaw Gyi is uneducated and orphaned, with little recollection of any other life, this is all he knows. He thinks of himself as a cockroach within the prison, content to eke out a meager living while remaining virtually invisible. He is happy to remain as small as he is, recognizing that if he were bigger, there would not be enough food to sustain him.

It comes to a point where Teza gives up on his own life, realizing that he has no future, and that to fight further would be futile. In addition to his long sentence in solitary confinement, Teza’s prison guard, Sein Yun, seems dead set on keeping Teza incarcerated beyond his original sentence. Sein Yun is a known drug and jewel runner who cares only for himself. He seems to have a vendetta against Teza due to his status as a political prisoner. He provides Teza with a pen and paper, encouraging him to write a letter to Daw Suu Kyi, a leader of the National League for Democracy.



Sein Yun plans to send other guards in to search Teza’s cell, catching him with the contraband pen and paper, which could land him another ten years in prison. Just before he is caught, Teza has a strange dream that leads him to tear up the letter and swallow it just before the guards barge into his cell. Although the paper is long gone, the pen remains. The guards search but cannot seem to find it, and for this, Teza is horribly beaten. Finding that pen becomes the obsession of one of the cruelest guards, a man they call Handsome.

Teza is then taken to the prison doctor and given contraband morphine to ease the pain from his broken jaw. This is where he meets Zaw Gyi for the first time. Teza begins to prepare himself for his own death, to leave his body behind, a fact that he sees as inevitable. However, he refuses to give up on Zaw Gyi, formulating a plan to save his newfound friend.