The Nylon Hotel : Buying Rubies and Following the Circus in Myanmar

A brilliantly entertaining collection of character studies, written with warmth and humour, that reflect the changing fortunes of Burmese life. All friends of Burma will find this book hugely. Entertaining and enthralling.

• Witty and warm snapshots of lives lived under political turmoil

• Captures the strength and hope of the human spirit

• Reveals a hidden Myanmar unseen by western tourists

Cycling Myanmar, Mandalay, and the Nylon Hotel over three decades, Daniel Ehrlich opens a series of windows onto people and places held captive in time. Through beautifully crafted vignettes of coming and going, meeting and waiting, we are invited to get to know a prince among sidecar drivers, and anglophile living on the banks on the Irrawaddy, a long-haired freedom fighting musician, an octogenarian English teacher who might have been a princess, and the inventor who built a helicopter out of teak. Each story, in its own way, reflects the tragedy of a country trapped under military rule. But each contains human possibilities, fragile hope for the future, and the connections to deeper traditions in which darkness is a necessary counterpart to the light. “Ehrlich writes with warmth, insight, and a good deal of humour. This book should be required reading for all who are friends of Burma and who wish a better and free future for the Burmese people”. Richard Axelby, SOAS, University of London