The second installment of Carl Muller's Burgher trilogy continues the saga following The Jam Fruit Tree, set against the arrival of steam-driven locomotives in colonial Sri Lanka. When the British introduce their fearsome railway engines—smoke-belching, wailing contraptions that the villagers call yakada yaka, or Iron Demons—the Burghers who operate them become central to a world of conflict and tension. These adventurous men have a talent for defying convention and stirring up trouble, driven by their restless spirits and thirst for excitement in a rapidly changing landscape.
