His masterly account of a cruel flight from invasion.
Paterson, manager of a small rice mill, organizes the evacuation of a small English community when Japanese forces invade Burma. Paterson takes with him his Burmese mistress and her young brother. The rest of the party take along their prejudices, their pettiness and their squabbles, aand a small enclave of English insularity moves north through Burma.
Swiftly and inevitably the journey becomes a tragic working out of tension and insoluble conflict.