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In Search of the Asian Drug Cartel That Survived the CIA
by Patrick Winn
The untold story of an indigenous people running the world's mightiest narco-state — and America's struggle to thwart them.
In Asia's narcotics-producing heartland, the Wa reign supreme. They dominate the Golden Triangle, a mountainous stretch of Burma between Thailand and China. Their 30,000-strong army, wielding missiles and attack drones, makes Mexican cartels look like street gangs.
Wa moguls are unrivaled in the region's $60 billion meth trade and infamous for mass-producing pink, vanilla-scented speed pills. Drugs finance Wa State, a bona fide nation with its own laws, anthems, schools, and electricity grid. Though revered by their people, Wa leaders are scorned by US policymakers as vicious "kingpins" who "poison our society for profit."
In Narcotopia, award-winning journalist Patrick Winn uncovers the truth behind Asia's top drug-trafficking organization, as told by a Wa commander turned DEA informant. This gripping narrative shreds drug war myths and leads to a chilling revelation: the Wa syndicate's origins are smudged with CIA fingerprints.
This is a saga of native people tapping the power of narcotics to create a nation where there was none before — and covert US intelligence operations gone wrong.
"Part gangster saga, part espionage thriller, and part liberation epic, Winn's narrative alternates between rollicking adventure and harrowing violence conveyed in vivid, muscular prose. It's a riveting portrait of how deeply the drug trade is embedded in Southeast Asia's modernizing economies—and in America's foreign policy." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A valuable contribution to the literature on the international drug trade and its seemingly limitless power." —Kirkus Reviews
This information about Narcotopia was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Patrick Winn is an investigative journalist who covers rebellion and black markets in Southeast Asia. He is the author of two books: Hello Shadowlands and Narcotopia. Winn enters the worlds of guerrillas and drug traffickers to mine stories that otherwise go ignored. His work has appeared in many outlets — The New York Times, NPR, the BBC — and he has received the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award (also known as the 'poor man's Pulitzer') as well as a National Press Club award. Winn is also a three-time winner of Amnesty International's Human Rights Press Awards among other prizes.
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