The fact is, some books simply need to exist. Burma: The Cookbook is one of these. Burma is culturally rich and complex in many ways, but perhaps nowhere more than in its extraordinary food culture. It’s at the crossroads between the food of the great Indian subcontinent (to its west) and the food of Southeast Asia (to its east), with a dash of Chinese influence (from the north), making it an amazing place in-between. With simple recipes for food that manages to be elegant and earthy at the same time, plus stories of a place and a people that inspired Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, and George Orwell, this may be Duguid’s most enchanting cookbook yet. The book features photographs throughout–of the finished dishes, of people, of a hauntingly beautiful land–as well as travel tips, a history of Burma, extensive glossaries, and a bibliography.