Product Description

Set in the days of the Empire, with the British ruling in Burma, Burmese Days describes both indigenous corruption and Imperial bigotry, when 'after all, natives were natives – interesting, no doubt, but finally only a "subject" people, an inferior people with black faces'. Against the prevailing orthodoxy, Flory, a white timber merchant, befriends Dr Veraswami, a black enthusiast for Empire. The doctor needs help. U Po Kyin, Sub- divisional Magistrate of Kyauktada, is plotting his downfall. The only thing that can save him is European patronage: membership of the hitherto all-white Club. While Flory prevaricates, beautiful Elizabeth Lackersteen arrives in Upper Burma from Paris. At last, after years of 'solitary hell', romance and marriage appear to offer Flory an escape from the 'lie' of the 'pukka sahib pose'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7777 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) was born in India in 1903. He was educated at Eton, served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, and worked in Britain as a private tutor, schoolteacher, bookshop assistant and journalist. In 1936, Orwell went to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and was wounded. In 1938 he was admitted into a sanatorium and from then on was never fully fit. George Orwell died in London in 1950. Emma Larkin is the pseudonym for an American journalist who was born and raised in Asia, studied the Burmese language at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and covers Asia in her journalism from her base in Bangkok. She has been visiting Burma for close to ten years.

Customer Reviews

One of Orwell's four great novels
That the imagery and language of 1984 have become so indelibly printed on the minds of modern society should be enough on its own to make people investigate Orwell's other novels. Sadly, this isn't the case so most people miss out on the joys of the greatest English writer of the 20th Century.

Burmese Days is Orwell's homage to the Raj, if you like; a caustic look at the miserable and meaningless existence of ex-pats in the dying days of the Empire. Like all Orwell's writing, it is informed by his own personal experiences. He also writes with a clarity and simplicity that means his images and meanings are never in doubt.

Ultimately, Burmese Days is a tragedy and there is scant little hope or jollity to be found anywhere in it, but this doesn't detract from a wholly engaging read. Like Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's great work about the Spanish Civil War, you are left understanding what life was like for the writer in his days in the service of the Crown. As with all Orwell's novels except, ironically, 1984, the author's humanist tendencies shine through, meaning you feel sympathy and empathy with everyone in the book; Orwell is not helping you to understand the processes of life, rather their impact, in the hope that you can do something about it.

Just so you know, the four Orwell novels everyone should read are 1984, Animal Farm, Coming up for Air and Burmese Days (in that order), and everyone should also read Homage to Catalonia and The Road to Wigan Pier as well. His essays are equally wonderful and the most startling thing about all his writing is how relevant its themes and observations still are 60 or 70 years on.

Orwell's forgotten masterpiece
A work of amazing power which deserves to rank up there with 1984 and Animal Farm. Orwell delivers a wonderful character study of Flory (the main character)and uses the novel to express his own absolute disgust at the way the British Empire was run. Some of the passages contain such wonderful insight into the human condition that they stay in the brain forever. If the ending does not leave you moved, you're made of stone.

Burmese Days Review
I rank two novels as my absolute favourites. 'Burmese Days' and Somerset Maugham's 'The Narrow Corner', in several ways similar. Both are set in Empire and both describe the effect on a character when a devastating realisation of unrequited love descends. To read into Flory's mind is to see an obsession not with Elizabeth but with a flawed projection of his own needs. If this has no resonance with you, then this novel at least illustrates the versatility of Orwell's genius. There is more to this novel than a comment on colonialism or even semi-autobiography. This is the most accurate love story I have read.