Recommended reading: Rory MacLean’s Under the Dragon

If you’re looking for something to give to your fellow traveler this holiday season, I have a suggestion for you: Rory MacLean’s excellent book on the mystery and tragedy of Burma, Under the Dragon.

It’s come to the point where travel narratives are a dime a dozen and, let’s face it, most of them stick to the tried-and-true formula of wacky-humorous-adventure stories told with witty, self-deprecating interludes. Such books make good fodder for sun-soaked hammocks or cramped airline seats, but if you’re looking for something a bit more, definitely check out Under the Dragon.

The book went through six editions in hardback, won an Arts Council Writers’ Award and was short listed for the Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph Travel Book Prize. It was also recently re-issued with a new preface that describes MacLean as “exclusively, and self-consciously, a literary writer about travel.”

That sums up the appeal of Under the Dragon better than anything else I can tell you. It’s a phenomenal book, written with a powerful, insightful voice — someone who has moved past the glib, easy travel writing to something that’s much closer to a really good novel than most travel books.

Which isn’t to say the book is fiction, it’s not (though at times you may wish it was, given Burma’s brutal recent history). It offers a powerful, sometimes painful look at Burma and all its troubles. Under the Dragon recounts MacLean’s journey through Burma weaving together MacLean’s story with those of four women: a girl named Ni Ni, born with remarkably sensitive hands who, through the fortunates of revolution and upheaval , becomes trapped in Southeast Asia’s sex trade; Ma Swe, a reluctant government censor; Nan Si Si, mother of a hill-tribe warlord; and, naturally, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate and elected leader of Burma, who has been held under house arrest for over a decade.

Along the way MacLean weaves in a remarkable range of subjects — Burmese history, philosophy, art, archaeology, ornithology and even magic.

Under the Dragon is one of the finest works of non-fiction that I’ve read — travel writing or otherwise. It manages to evoke Burma is such a way that you feel like you’re there and, in light of the continuing struggles and tragedy in Burma, it feels every bit as relevant now as when it was first published ten years ago.