Maurice Collis. Stated first American edition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943. Both unclipped dust jacket, in a mylar protective cover, and hardcover are in Near Fine and Very Good+ condition respectively. Two pages at end of the book are marked, otherwise, in really well preserved, 265 pp.
"A hybrid of history and biography, Maurice Collis's The Land of the Great Image concerns a little-known Portuguese friar abroad in early seventeenth-century Asia. The book chronicles the great diplomatic coup of Friar Manrique's career, opening the kingdom of Arakan, now Burma (land of the great image of the Buddha) to the Church and to Portuguese trade, Dispatched from Goa, capital of the now almost forgotten Portuguese empire in Asia, Manrique made his way across and around the Bay of Bengal, surviving shipwreck, tigers, and pirates, to reach the court of King Thiri-thu-dhamma."
