Burmese Days

A lifelong hero of mine, George Orwell is best known for his political allegories Animal Farm and 1984, but his first published novel, written after a five-year stint as a policeman in Burma, gave an indication of his direction as a writer, with a vicious swipe at colonial attitudes and manners. The main character, John Flory, is a jaded teak merchant who detests the colonial “lie that we’re here to uplift our Black brothers instead of to rob them”. He has no friends at the local colonial club, is unlucky in love and meets a tragic end—all part of… show more.

George Orwell is best known for his futuristic political visions, searing political satire, and his expose of the deprivation of the English and French labouring classes in the interwar decades. My favourite of his books is Burmese Days, set in 1920s British colonial Burma (now Myanmar) and based on his own time there as an imperial police officer. Its detailed descriptions of the social lives and daily pastimes of Britons in a remote colonial outpost reveal the ways that gender structured colonial race relations. The book’s protagonist, himself critical of other white colonisers, meets his inglorious end because he… show more.