Praising Tahir Shah's last book, Sorcerer's Apprentice, Doris Lessing hailed the author's "genius for surreal traveling." Shah proves his gift again in Trail of Feathers, a breathless new adventure full of strange encounters and wonderful visions. His imagination captured by the account of a sixteenth-century Spanish monk who reported that the Incas "flew like birds" over the jungle and by tales of flying in Peruvian folklore, the author sets out to discover whether the ancients really were airborne -- or experienced flying by other means. A shrunken head from Peru and a feather with traces of blood on it are his only clues when he begins his quest for the Incas' secret.

But soon he's trekking in the high Andes, where he pitches up at Machu Picchu, the Incas' most sacred city, and one associated with the condor. From the metropolis of Cusco he motors out to a mysterious island on Lake Titicaca. Gathering treasures, curiosities, and dubious companions along the way, the author follows his trail to the coastal desert and the baffling puzzle of the Nazca Lines. It was these inexplicable etchings in rock, so huge that the animal forms they represent can only be grasped from the air -- that is, while flying -- that Erich Von Daniken attributed to aliens in his Chariots of the Gods. Is it any surprise that ancient cloth from a nearby burial ground bears images of birdmen? After an encounter with a guinea pig-wielding shaman, it's off to the Amazon, where the author joins a Vietnam vet on an epic journey deep into the jungle to uncover the secrets of the Shuar, a tribe of legendary savagery reputed for their expertise with ayahuasca, the mind-altering "Vine of the Dead."

Tahir Shah's flair for the unusual reveals Peru as we've never seen it. With his trademark humor, abundant curiosity, and oddball assortment of companions from scholars to smugglers, from conmen to madmen, and from shepherds to shamans, he offers a journey that is no less illuminating than it is hilarious -- and true.