Nothing is straightforward in this captivating land that is home to a combustible mix of races, religions and resources. 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. Authoritative and ground-breaking, A Savage Dreamland: Journeys in Burma is set to be a modern classic of travel writing.For almost fifty years Burma was ruled by a paranoid military dictatorship and isolated from the outside world. In his vivid and revelatory account of life, history, culture and politics, David Eimer chronicles the awakening of a country as it returns to the global fold and explores a fractured nation, closed to foreigners for decades.

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. 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. A Savage Dreamland: Journeys in Burma reveals a country where temples take priority over infrastructure, fortune tellers thrive and golf courses are carved out of war zones.

The first of its kind: an exploration of one of the most mysterious countries in the world, as told by one of the first outsiders to access the country in its entirety For almost fifty years Burma was ruled by a paranoid military dictatorship and isolated from the outside world.

A Savage Dreamland by David Eimer