The Land Without Evil

The gentle Karen, a tribe in Burma's eastern regions, call their country a land without evil. They number between four and five million, and have been fighting for half a century to keep their land and identity. Many - at least 40 per cent - are Christians, and have suffered particularly harsh treatment. Burma today, and Karen State in particular, is a land torn apart by evil. It is a land ruled by a regime which took power by force, ignored the will of the people in an election, and survives by creating a climate of fear. It is a land terrorised by a military regime which to this day perpetrates a catalogue of crimes against humanity. It takes people for forced labour, uses villagers as human minesweepers, captures children and forces them to become soldiers, systematically rapes ethnic minority women, and burns down villages and crops. It is a regime which has killed thousands of people in the ethnic minority areas. This compassionate but unflinching account of the Karen's predicament is an important step in galvanising Western opinion about this ongoing act of genocide.

Gott describes his journey through the heart of South America, across the swampland that forms the watershed between the Plate and the Amazon rivers. He intermingles his travel account with the results of his extensive research into the history of this land that once formed the contested frontier between Spanish and Portuguese territory and was the setting for a string of Jesuit missions and later for the extermination of the local peoples. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

When European beliefs and customs meet those of the Guarani of South America 250 years ago, a struggle ensues. Join the Guaran, people as they leave behind all that is familiar and set out upon a quest in search of their mythical earthly paradise, the land without evil, a quest that brings them, untenable heartache and incredible joy. A quest which culminates in the demise and ultimate triumph of an indegenous people.

It seems that Americans - North, South, Middle, and Caribbean - tend to define themselves by narrating their End."--BOOK JACKET.