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→Fiction: "Burmese days"
* Orwell, George
''Burmese days''.
London: Penguin, 2001 (Penguin classics)
As the local judge plots the downfall of the unbribeable Dr Veraswami and the members of the British Club bemoan the uppity behaviour of the natives and the lack of ice for their drinks, John Flory feels increasing dissonance until the arrival of the young Miss Lackersteen brings the possibility of a soul-mate. The author’s background makes him a child of the Raj, but instead of being adulatory about British rule this is a searing account of racism and corruption set in a remote Burmese outpost in the 1920s. The evocative descriptions of the landscape, the trials of the climate, and the characters both local and expatriate who populate the novel bring place and period powerfully to life.
Orwell knew what he was writing about; Eric Arthur Blair (his real name) served with the Indian Imperial Police Force in Burma for a number of years. Prior to the book being published in 1934 there were concerns about law suits. After reading it the head of the Mandalay Police Training School threatened to horsewhip his former student should he ever encounter him again. His family was apparently unperturbed by the story. Perhaps his father having been an uncovenanted member of the Indian Civil Service in the Bengal Opium Department and his mother having grown up with her French family in Moulmein, South Burma, meant that they were unsurprised by what George Orwell’s first novel revealed.
===Poetry===
