Burmese Days

Orwell's first novel draws heavily on his time as a Military Policeman in pre-war Burma. Set in the small town of Kyauktada this tale of the fag-end of Empire follows lonely bachelor Flory and the other European residents over several months. Orwell sketches in portraits of the kind of entitled, racist Little Englanders that served in the far flung reaches of the British Empire in its waning years. The natives are seen as something less than human. The prevailing attitude is that this is how it has always been, and will continue.

The arrival of a young English woman, Elizabeth Lackersteen, gives Flory brief hope of marriage and a new life beyond the jungle and the “Club”. All the while the machinations of a Burmese official against Flory's friend, Dr Verswami, hover in the background, threatening the cosy life of the residents with a fake rebellion.

It's a slow novel and, truth be told, not much happens until the latter stages of the book. But the characters are well drawn, if somewhat caricatured, especially the angst-ridden, lonely Flory. It was in Burma that Orwell went from snobbish ex-public schoolboy to a socially conscious writer and Socialist and the attitudes that engendered that change are on display in this novel. Worth a read, if only as a starting point on the road to his masterpiece, 1984.