On the Shadow Tracks

On the Shadow Tracks harnesses the railway lines of Myanmar's complicated past to its turbulent present, and the result is part travelogue, part history and completely absorbing. An astonishing achievement

Joanna Lumley

A clear-eyed travelogue that brings modern Myanmar to life... The book is ambitious, covering the intrepid author’s train journey through eight regions of Myanmar... The physical as well as intellectual feat is vast, and the conflicts that Hammond examines continue to shake the ground she travels... On the Shadow Tracks raises questions that are relevant worldwide... It reminds the reader of the danger of silence, bringing up weighty questions of memory and forgetting and what these ideas mean for securing justice. We are reminded that without making truth explicit, mass suffering can be erased from history and the national imagination, making it possible for human lives to be swept aside as nothing

Myanmar Now

A journey like nothing I've ever read before. The quest at the heart of this book throws off the romance of rail travel in extraordinary reportage by a brave and brilliant journalist. Compassionate and humane, in the tradition of Orwell

Sophy Roberts, author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia

Contains history, mystery and even some comedy… Some journeys end as tracks sink under rainwater or mud, forcing Hammond to continue on foot. She braves mosquitoes on open air carriages and suspicious passengers who turn out to be police or soldiers, as well as the Gokteik viaduct, a rickety steel bridge above a deep gorge in Shan state... Hammond's book is not strictly for veteran Myanmar hands, or rail enthusiasts. In fact, her storytelling provides a friendly entree for anyone interested to learn of Myanmar's modern history

Nikkei Asia

Courageous... The book gives a damning account of the army officers and politicians in charge during recent decades.... At times the landscape is the most eloquent witness

Spectator

Hammond [gives] voice to the people most affected by decades of brutality and mismanagement... On the Shadow Tracks transports the reader to a part of the world too often veiled

Observer

Hammond uses her descriptive powers on loquacious tea shop habitués, aggrieved farmers or nostalgic railway retirees, and for evoking the kindness of back-country Myanmar... On the Shadow Tracks reveals mass exploitation through painful individual memories

Mekong Review

One of the most absorbing and comprehensive overviews of Myanmar's Great Railway Disaster to date, and [...] a précis of the greater disaster of the modern Burmese nation

TLS