A Savage Dreamland : Journeys in Burma

For almost fifty years Burma was ruled by a paranoid military dictatorship and isolated from the outside world. A historic 2015 election swept an Aung San Suu Kyi-led civilian government to power and was supposed to usher in a new golden era of democracy and progress, but Burma remains unstable and undeveloped, a little-understood country. Nothing is straightforward in this captivating land that is home to a combustible mix of races, religions and resources.

Setting out from Yangon, the old capital, David Eimer travels throughout this enigmatic nation, from the tropical south to the Burmese Himalayas in the far north, via the Buddhist-centric heartland and the jungles and mountains where rebel armies fight for autonomy in the longest-running civil wars in recent history. This is a country where temples take priority over infrastructure, fortune tellers thrive and golf courses are carved out of war zones.

The story of modern Burma is told through the voices of the people Eimer encounters along the way: former political exiles, the squatters in Yangon's shanty towns, radical monks, Rohingya refugees, princesses and warlords, and the ethnic minorities clustered along the country's frontiers. In this vivid and revelatory account of life, history, culture and politics, Eimer chronicles the awakening of a country as it returns to the global fold and explores a fractured nation, closed to foreigners for decades. Authoritative and ground-breaking, this is travel writing at its finest.