Na Ga was always in search of a better life. So why is she stuck in a hotel room in Wanting, a godforsaken town on the Chinese-Burmese border? Before her arrival at the frontier, Na Ga (her borrowed name) careers from place to place, forced to take on a new identity each time. Born into the Wild Lu tribe, about whom she remembers almost nothing, she is rescued from her life as a rural eel-catcher by a family of civilised Americans who leave her behind in Rangoon when they run into visa problems. As a teenager Na Ga finds herself chasing the dream of a new life in Thailand where further betrayals and violations await yet for a time it seems that her fighting spirit will not be broken. But for how long can Na Ga belong nowhere and with no one? We follow her trail from the remote Burmese countryside to the pulsating streets of Bangkok and back to the dingy hotel in Wanting where, finally, she is forced to confront her compulsion to run away, and to ask herself why it is that, until now, she s managed to resist the journey home.

Author Biography

Wendy Law-Yone was born in Mandalay, Burma, and grew up in Rangoon, where her father founded the leading English-language daily, The Nation. Wendy was exiled to the United States where she published two novels, The Coffin Tree and Irrawaddy Tango, before her move to the UK following a David T.K. Wong creative writing fellowship at the University of East Anglia. She lives in London and Rye.