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Burmese Days is set in 1920s British Burma, in the fictional district of Kyauktada, based on Katha (formerly spelled Kathar), a town where Orwell served. Like the fictional town, it is the head of a branch railway line above Mandalay on the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) River.
Mar 20, 1974 · Burmese Days focuses on a handful of Englishmen who meet at the European Club to drink whisky and to alleviate the acute and unspoken loneliness of life in 1920s Burma—where Orwell himself served as an imperial policeman—during the waning days of British imperialism.
George Orwell. Set in the days of the Empire, with the British ruling in Burma, Orwell's book describes corruption and imperial bigotry. Flory, a white timber merchant, befriends Dr Veraswami, a black enthusiast for the Empire, whose downfall can only be prevented by membership at an all-white club. 276 pages, Hardcover.
Burmese Days, written by George Orwell and published in 1934, is a critique of British imperialism and its effects on individuals and cultures.
Published in the USA in 1934 and the UK in 1935, Burmese Days was George Orwell’s first novel. An examination of the debasing effect of empire on occupied and occupier, the novel follows John Flory, a timber-merchant in 1920s Burma (where Orwell himself served as an imperial policeman).
Burmese Days, however, is something very different. It is a portrait of the dark side of the Raj, chronicling sordid and shameful episodes of empire life. Few of the characters in Burmese Days have any redeemable features; both British and Burmese alike are tarnished by the colonial system in which they live.
Orwell’s first novel, Burmese Days (1934), established the pattern of his subsequent fiction in its portrayal of a sensitive, conscientious, and emotionally isolated individual who is at odds with an oppressive or dishonest social environment.