![]() It controls us and we cannot will it away. As a former colleague of George’s, Cho Cho, explains: In this way, they are also a metaphor for the country itself. Both characters have ended up in Burma due to these events. George has a terrible secret from his military service while Molly, a feisty Englishwoman in her thirties, is burdened with the scandal of a previous relationship and childhood abuse. This feeds into a major theme in the novel: overcoming the past. However, a simpler structure would have compromised Finch’s ability to show how deep political schisms and cronyism run through all levels of Burmese society and their terrifying effects on the innocent. Having the story told from eight different viewpoints adds to the complexity and can trip up the unfocused reader. These were the miners, who lived for heroin. They, too, were human, like us, but naked, almost. Then the trees between the mines were gone, and craters in the earth inhaled and exhaled creatures, dirty, wet and scrambling. The Kachin state is the source of the world’s best quality jade but its procurement comes at great human cost. Nor does Finch shirk from detailing the impact of the country’s political struggles on its desperate population and the landscape they inhabit. In one particularly evocative scene, George is sitting in his (theoretically modern) office, where the electricity regularly cuts out, inhaling the scent of mold and watching geckos run across the ceiling. Meanwhile, the developing nation of Myanmar he presents is intimately and honestly described: dysfunctional warts and all. As a lawyer himself, Finch can flavor the prose with in-jokes and a few stabs at his profession. The plot is complicated-the legal details can be long-winded-but it’s clear that author James Finch knows his subject. ![]() Silence in the Land of Gold, James Finch (Penguin Random House SEA) With the help of Zaw Dan, a Kachin general and Air Burma shareholder, who also happens to be Molly’s lover, they uncover a web of jade smuggling, corruption and political intrigue which leads right back to Stuart & Drake itself. The unlikely trio band together on an adventure into the northern Kachin state, which is controlled by the rebel Kachin Independence Army. To apply further pressure, George is allotted a tail himself, Police Sergeant Aung Myat Soe. It’s an impossible mission, not least because the Burmese police are interested in one of the senior Burmese lawyers at the firm, Nandar Htway, telling George that she is a potential witness in a murder investigation and he must report on her. Unless George and Molly can find a plausible reason for the crash, which would not have been covered by the original policy thereby rendering Stuart & Drake’s opinion irrelevant, the firm will go bust. With Air Burma short of cash, the lender will come after Stuart & Drake for the money.Īlthough the firm has malpractice cover, Drake’s action will be classed as gross negligence and the insurer won’t pay out. Drake admits that, in a hurry, he signed off a legal opinion for a lender to Air Burma without checking that the required insurance policy was in place. His new boss, Seth Drake, tasks him and another colleague, Molly Durbeville, with investigating an Air Burma crash. “Silence in the Land of Gold” by James FinchĪplane crash in the Kachin jungle kicks off this vividly-realized thriller which also has plenty to say about military rule in the Myanmar (formerly Burma) of the previous decade and the battle of its some states for independence from it.Īmerican George Wilford, a washed-up lawyer in his late fifties, is forced into employment with Stuart & Drake, based in Yangon, as part of a rescue deal for his original firm in Singapore. Full Review of Silence in the Land of Gold in the Asian Review of Books
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