Among Insurgents: Walking Through Burma

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Shelby Tucker entered the Shan State of Burma through a border area of China closed to foreigners, crossed the Kachin Hills and left Burma via an area of India closed to foreigners. He was detained by Communist rebels, handed over to Kachin rebels and arrested by the Indian Army." "Among Insurgents is more than an adventure story. It describes the Kachins, the most important of Burma's 'hidden colonies', of whom very little has been written, offers a brief and readable analysis of the Burmese Civil War, including its ethnic and religious dimensions, and examines the symbiotic relationship between the civil war and the international drugs trade. Shelby Tucker interviewed poppy farmers and leaders on both sides of the narcotics divide, and his report to the US National Security Council may have contributed to Washington's changed perception of the Burma Army as the main player in the trade.

SYNOPSIS

In 1989 the 65-year-old American lawyer trekked from China to India through the wild Kachin hill country of northern Burma. After being captured by Communist rebels in Burma, he linked up with the Kachin Independence Army, which had been battling the Rangoon government since Burmese independents half a century before. He is working on another book on Burmese troubles. Distributed in the US by St. Martin's Press. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Robert Carver - The Times Literary Supplement

…endlessly fascinating and well–informed on this little–known region of Asia… The most unusual and distinguished travel book I have read in years.

Robert Carver - The Times Literary Supplement

. . . . In . . .Burma, the elephant-driving mahout is called an oozy, a shat khat is a short cut, and a mawdaw lam is a motor road - the last two deriving from English after the century of British imperial rule. This and much other Burmese lore Shelby Tucker imparts in his encyclopaedic first travel book, Among Insurgents: Walking through Burma, which has been ten years in the writing. An ebullient American from Mississippi who studied law at Oxford, Tucker has lived an adventurous, intellectual and athletic life. At fifty five, he decided he simply had to walk across Northern Burma, from China to India, this terrain cut off from the rest of the world for fifty years by a complex guerrilla war against the Rangoon government, and the politics of the opium trade. . . . .

Tucker's Big Adventure, as he himself calls it, is a throwback to the heroic age of travel. For Tucker himself the clock appears to have stopped in 1850 - all is chivalry, muscular Christianity, and derring-do. He is, however, endlessly fascinating and well-informed on this little known region of Asia where the end of A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh elides surreally into Paul Theroux's Mosquito Coast. His book is also outstandingly well written in the insouciant Peter Fleming tradition. I did reflect, on finishing what is the most unusual and distinguished travel book I have read for years, that, single-handed, Shelby Tucker could have started the Vietnam War in an afternoon, if given the chance - and that he would probably regard that as some sort of compliment.

Colin Thubron

For near-lunatic courage and a unique mine of information, [this book] by Shelby Tucker might belong to another century. At the age of 53, Tucker, a maverick American lawyer, decided to cross North Burma, entering illegally from China and departing illegally into India. He was captured by Burmese Communist guerrillas, passed on to Christian Kachin rebels (with whom he was soon consorting), was arrested by the Indian army, and six months later emerged to write this astonishing book: a surreal mixture of "Boy's Own" derring-do and expert knowledge of an almost unknown region.—The Sunday Telegraph

Maggie Gee

Every few years there comes along a first book by an unknown author that makes you want to stand up and applaud. This is such a book. Driven by its author's love for a remote tract of the world and its peoples, it tells a tale of gripping heroism in a laconic, elegant style." This is a story of real, risk-taking, old-fashioned travel, not pre-paid by a publisher or faked by a television company. Beautifully written and illustrated with color photos and maps, it deserves to become a classic.—Daily Telegraph

Wanderlust

Lunacy and bravery are two words that spring to mind with Among Insurgents: Walking Through Burma � on Shelby Tucker's China-to-India trek, meeting Burmese hill tribes and being captured by Communist troops.Read all 6 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

I cannot recommend Among Insurgents highly enough. Shelby Tucker describes a quite extraordinary trek across the genuinely remote and dangerous mountainous north of Burma. His account gets to grips with an immensely complicated political scenario and is written in the classic manner. I was reminded quite often of Fitzroy MacLean and Peter Fleming. — Justin Wintle

I read the book over the weekend and laughed my head off. What an addle-pated odyssey it is. The nonchalance with which he does things that could get him locked up in some bamboo cage for thirty or forty years takes my breath away. I've seldom been more aware of the thinness of the line between courage and lunacy. Luckily for his narrative, he is aware of it too, and has great fun jumping back and forth over it. I take my hat off to him, both for actually doing what he did and for writing so well about it. — Tobias Wolff