Burma Sahib

By Paul Theroux,

Book cover of Burma Sahib

Book description

Chosen by John Irving in the New York Times as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century

“Paul Theroux has exploited this biographical lacuna with great shrewdness and gusto… his fictional account of Blair’s life there [Burma] is a valid and entirely credible attempt to add flesh to…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Burma Sahib as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I'm fascinated by Orwell, and how astonishingly relevant his work remains, from its relevance to our understanding of authoritarianism to the remarkable complexity of his short pieces like the essay, "Shooting an Elephant." Theroux evokes the world of Burma in Orwell's time as well as the journey of the naïve young man fresh from Eton, who ships out east in the service of the Raj. But the Orwell found most fascinating in this fictional exploration was the writer in the making, the one who reached for words in his mind and his journals to make sense of the mindboggling world…

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