Product Description

A rare and illuminating look at one of the most fascinating places in the world--a place of tyranny and repression that is also a place of beautiful people who warmly welcome the visitor, of ancient cultural traditions that still thrive today, of great religious relics and works of art. An enlightening, politically savvy, exotic journey of discovery. Maps.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1457358 in Books
• Published on: 1994-06-28
• Released on: 1994-06-28
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 8.50" h x .75" w x 5.50" l, .97 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 340 pages

From Publishers Weekly
With detail, expertise and a moral voice, freelance writer Sesser portrays five repressed lands. His narratives--reprinted from the New Yorker --begin with the contradictions of Singapore, prosperous and tidy, whose competent, incorruptible leaders rule by fear. In desperately poor Laos, where the United States dropped more bombs than on Nazi Germany, villagers fashion daily essentials from remnant munitions and the wreckage of downed planes. A chilling report on Cambodia warns of the political reemergence of the murderous Khmer Rouge. A portrait of Burma limns how that republic's form of Buddhism tolerates tyranny and describes the nascent protest movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi. Sesser does not condemn all logging in Borneo, but finds the telling detail: in Japan, the logs become plywood, as "the gold of the Sarawak rain forest is minted into pennies."
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Not a typical travel book, this work goes to the heart of Southeast Asian politics. In insightful, compelling prose, Sesser profiles five Southeast Asian neighbors: Burma, Singapore, Laos, Cambodia, and Borneo. All the contradictions are there: new BMW's driving next to crowded pedicabs; an indigenous tribe fighting to protect its rain forest from logging trucks; city dwellers without electricity living near the mansion of a Cambodian prince who has brought from China chefs, banquet waiters, and a doctor to check for poisoned food. Few are guiltless here, including we Americans, whose cluster bombs still cover large areas of these nations. In these probing essays, which appeared originally in The New Yorker , Sesser asks pointed questions: Why and how will the Khmer Rouge most likely return to power? How did Singapore become an economic giant, and at what expense to its citizens' freedoms? This book provides an important introduction to a critical area of the world, lands emerging from "the battlefield to the marketplace." Highly recommended.
- Doris Lynch, Oakland P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Five sharp essays (expanded from New Yorker pieces) that explore political, socioeconomic, and ecological conditions in five southeast Asian locales: Singapore, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, and Borneo. Sesser presents concise histories of the territories he visited as well as interviews with the demagogues and dissidents who keep this remote corner of the world in a near-constant state of turmoil. His description of the Singapore scene will probably prove the least familiar to most readers and for that reason comes across as the freshest, most involving, piece here. The author captures the Kafkaesque quality of life in the port city, where every aspect of residents' lives is regulated (Cosmopolitan is banned, and failing to flush a public toilet is punishable by a fine). In his efforts to attract multinational investors, Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, Sesser tells us, has become obsessed with social and political ``stability,'' creating a sterile--if enormously prosperous--enclave in which annual economic growth is measured in double digits. Cambodia, by contrast, is a country of immense poverty, racked by shifting political allegiances and shocking compromises. In Sesser's view, the murderous Khmer Rouge will probably regain power, since they seem to be the only entity able to deal with the nation's near-universal political corruption. Moving on to Borneo, the author exposes Japanese involvement in the ecological destruction of the island's rain forests and in the destabilization of the native peoples. An eye-opening report on nations caught between the securities of the past and the uncertainties of the future. (Five maps) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.