The Land of the Great Image: Historical NarrativeA 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