3 Review(s)

Great Game East is a seminal work on the conflict between India and China for one of the most volatile Asian frontiers by Bertil Lintner. Summary of the Book It is a story nearly decades in the making: that of two countries trying to be allies but pitted against each other time and again in their quest for power. India and China are no longer the friends Nehru wished them to be, instead their rivalry culminated into an ugly war in 1962, and that war still goes on, undeclared, but obvious. Spies infiltrate either country, seeking vital information that could help the other. The seizing of Tibet by China led to India’s unrest and the refuge granted to the Tibetans by India infuriated China. The northeastern states of India feel the brunt of this war, and this unfinished battle continues to haunt the people of the area. Bertil Lintner draws from his vast knowledge as an expert on Burma and the surrounding areas to speak about how India and China stand on the brink of another conflict that could change the Indian subcontinent forever. A conflict he calls the Great Game East, equivalent to the Machiavellian plots of the Russia of the Tsars and the Britain of the Victorian era. About Bertil Lintner Bertil Lintner is a former senior writer for the Far Eastern Economic Review, reporting on Burma and her neighbours. Currently a writer for Asia Times Online and the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet, he is a prominent writer on Burmese issues as well as ethnic minorities, insurgencies and narcotics in Southeast and South Asia.