Closer Home - George Orwell's "Burmese Days"
Like the rest of the world, Indians get most of their Orwellian exposure from Animal Farm and 1984 . But it’s Burmese Days , Orwell’s debut novel, that is closer to home. Fearing reprimand from the British government, Orwell had Burmese Days published in the United States first, in 1934. Born Eric Arthur Blair to British parents in Bihar, India, in 1903, he was raised and educated in England. His father worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. Orwell attended Eton on a scholarship but chose to join the Indian Imperial Police at the age of 19, returning to Burma soon after. We know right away who the protagonist of the book, John Flory, is modelled after. Set in the 1920s, Burmese Days follows Flory, a timber merchant with a disfiguring birthmark who has lived in Kyauktada for well over a decade. His birthmark, or so he thinks, and his aversion to the pretentiousness of the elitist Pukka Sahib -ness alienate him from the oth...