Author(s): Rory MacLean

Travel

It is just over ten years ago since Burmese people rose up against their military government. The unarmed demonstrators were cut down, leaving more than five thousand people dead. Under the Dragon, is a brilliant evocation of contemporary Burma in which Rory Maclean travels from a decaying Rangoon to the heart of the golden triangle, seeking out the victims and perpetrators of the uprising. He rides with a hill-tribe warlord, shares tea with a government censor and is trapped into a karaoke evening with a group of singing Chinese businessmen. He meets the most courageous and principled woman of our age, Aung San Suu Kyi, imprisoned leader of the democratic opposition party. And on his journey, he unravels a paradox of selfless generosity and sinister greed in a country stitched together by love and fear. Rory MacLean was born in Vancouver and has lived in Toronto, London, Berlin, Italy and the Hebrides. He trained as a screenwriter, but during the premiere of his last feature film his mother fell asleep and his girlfriend ran off with the financier. Not surprisingly, he took a holiday. He returned with the manuscript of Stalin