Eric Arthur Blair wrote under the pen name George Orwell. His work is marked by awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism.

Burmese Days is his first FICTION work, published in 1934. This book is based on his experience in Burma as a soldier in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma.

Orwell did not like what he saw there: arrogance, racism, and elitism. This story reflects all of these traits, rampant in 1920's rural Burma. So... the story is not a pretty one; the characters FAR from lovable. But the prose... oh, so lucid and descriptive. I loved it.

Orwell is so much better known for Animal Farm and 1984. I strongly recommend this book (if you can stand the dysfunctional characters). It is an outstanding work.

I was going to mark it as 3 stars because I didn't like the ending but I really enjoyed reading this book so I changed my mind. As a person who spent her teen years in a former British colony, albeit in the 90s, I could identify with a lot that the book talked about. It still shocked me how racist the Europeans were to the local Burmese and also how they lived in a different culture and never really appreciated that culture, no matter how long they had lived there.

“Envy is a horrible thing. It is unlike all other kinds of suffering in that there is no disguising it, no elevating it into tragedy. It is more than merely painful, it is disgusting.”



Not as polished as some of his later works, George Orwell's Burmese Days still packs a punch. Set during colonial rule in 1920s Burma, Orwell tells the story of John Flory, a British civil civil servant who feels trapped in an oppressive system he is part of. Still, Flory is hoping to secure what he sees as his last chance at happiness. At the same time, racial hostility is on full display as a British-only club contemplates opening up its membership to one Burmese. Burmese Days is raw and powerful and quite frankly depressing, but also engaging. It makes me want to revisit Frantz Fanon's
The Wretched of the Earth to see how Fanon's analysis of how colonialism dehumanizes people matches with how Orwell depicted it in Burma.

“...it is perhaps one's own fault, to see oneself drifting, rotting, in dishonour and horrible futility, and all the while knowing that somewhere within one there is the possibility of a decent human being.”

In Burmese Days, George Orwell comments on society and imperialism. The story is based around U Po Kyin, a magistrate, and Dr Veraswami. Each wants an affiliation to the European club. Their dispute ends up drafting a British timber merchant, John Florey and something happens. But I’m not going to tell you what: I am attempting to make this, and all, of my book reviews as spoiler free as possible.

When I read this book I found that the first 15 chapters were good. From 15-23 they got really good – things were coming together. But once I read the closing two chapters I was bowled over – this was the best ending to a novel I had ever read. All of the elements fell perfectly into place. The book that I had spent hours on end reading came together in the best way imaginable. If you don’t like the ending I’ll be amazed.

Another quite incredible feature of the book is the way in which he is able to link romance, culture and social commentary together with his characters. But the most fantastic thing about his use of romance is that it is in no way soppy. The romance enhances the social commentary without getting side tracked.

Burmese Days is a fabulous work of fiction and if you have not read it I would strongly recommend you do – you don’t know what you are missing. If, however, you have read the book, read it again – you can pick up quite a bit on a second reading.

But Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.

Behold, this day You have driven me from the face of the earth, and from Your face I will be hidden; I will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

“Not so!” replied the LORD. “If anyone slays Cain, then Cain will be avenged sevenfold.” And the LORD placed a mark on Cain, so that no one who found him would kill him.…


I can hardly think Orwell didn´t have "Cain´s mark" in mind when creating Mr. Flory.

Mr. Flory himself lived his life in the hope of salvation, by almost any means - from himself, from the situation he had put himself in, from where there seemed no escape, and he knew all too well that he was a marked man.

The love story, however touching, is just a narrative tool, but a tool used very well to reflect the frailty of the human nature.

We are approximately 20 years from the time when the "British India" begin falling seriously apart.
If we look at the people described in Burmese Days, they are nothing but accidents waiting to happen.

Nowadays, they would have been deemed unsuitable to serve any posting abroad, but times were different back then.
Hence we must also forgive the high degree of political incorrectness which runs like a river through the novel.

But Orwell as an outspoken social critic had a purpose and it is quite clear, also in 2020, that he is taking a stand - and the official worries about figures and situations being too recognizable, which led to a one year delay of publishing in the UK, speaks its own language, Burmese Days hit a bit too close to home.

One of the books which should leave you thinking, and feeling sorry for humanity.

This was my first Orwell 's novel and coincidently it was also Orwell's first novel. It shows.

Burmese Days is essentially about the pettiness and cruelty of colonial society. The novel follows a set of characters but decides, eventually, to focus on John Flory, a timber merchant who is stuck in Burma (Myanmar nowadays) due to his lack of prospects elsewhere. Flory has a love-hate relationship with the land that grants him a living. He hates the white colonial society, with its racism and arrogance, and he clearly admires the Burmese people and their ways. This admiration, however, is constantly stiffled because he, a white man, could never openly admire the "natives" without causing some major scandal. What is absurd is that this white society in which the so-called scandal would be given any attention is composed of less than 10 white people. As Flory himself admits there would be no serious consequence for him if he were to defy the unspoken and unwritten rules of colonial sociability. But he is a coward, and he hates conflict. He persists in his feebleness.

It is hard to simpathize with any of the characters. They are all either detestable or pathetic or ridiculous. The ending is predictably unhappy.

Burmese Days is well written because Orwell is incapable of bad writing. Still, it lacks proper structure and character development. Above all, it lacks subtlety. Everything is very much in your face in a way that grows tiring even for such a short novel. Still, and perhaps paradoxically, Orwell's anger - which is clear and palpable - at the utter injustice and absurdity of the reality of the British Empire is the best thing about this book. He takes all the myths about British Imperialism (the "benovelent rule", the "we brought civlization", the "competence of the officials") and destroys them. That I did enjoy.

I'm convinced that Orwell never wrote a bad book.
This was his first novel and it's worth noting that all the ingredients of his later and better know masterpieces are here in proto-form already.
Perhaps what i love most about Orwell is his piercing gaze, the ability to cut through pious and pompus offical nonsense and see the thing for what it really is. In this case he applies his intellectual scalpel to British colonial life in Burma. Everyone and everything gets stripped bare and exposed, what is rotten is shown to be rotten and no excuses are offered.
I was totally immersed in this and the world of colonial Burma really came alive to me in all it's humid, hypocritical glory.

Sketch-map of Kyauktada
Introduction
A Note on the Text

--Burmese Days

Orwell spent some years in Burma as a functionary of the in 1920s, during the colonial English occupation, and in this book he describes facts inspired by his own experience.
There's a lot of cynism in the way he portrays English colonialists, that feel superior to the natives. They don't want, for instance, natives in the European club, and for a native joining the club is a matter of prestige.
John Flory, the hero of the novel, is different from his countrymen and befriends burmese doctor Veraswami.
But the corrupted U Po Kyn, envious, tries to discredit them with the English.
The story gets complicated when in Burma arrives a beautiful young woman named Elizabeth, for whom Flory falls.

I was left wondering how I decide when a book is worth 5 stars. Good prose, check. Good characterization, check with a quibble. And it is this quibble that has me trying to make up my mind. Flory has a purple birthmark on one side of his face. He knows he is ugly, disfigured - he has known since he was a boy in public school. It seems not to have affected his self-confidence except with women. It becomes supremely important here because, of course, there is a woman. But I began to tire of hearing how the birthmark affected him in his every movement, his presentation to the world in general. Was this allegorical and I failed to understand? Perhaps. I recognize I'm very literal and often miss this type of literary device.

That said, this is another book I looked forward to having in front of me. Some days I complain that things use up my reading time. Instead, after starting this, I gave up other things to make sure my hours with the book were never short-changed. Surely that should go on my list of things that make a 5-star book.

There is also that this gives one something to mull over. Another reviewer complains that Orwell beats the drum of racism and imperialism. I know that some people are stupid - this was written between the wars - and that attitude was certainly prevalent in the time period. Instead, I wondered how a person can possibly think he is in love with someone with whom he has nothing in common. Too, I wondered how people can live in a place they hate so much they have to start the day with gin so that thet doesn't have to face how horrible a spot they are in, and that the level of alcohol rises throughout the day. Is this what men do who find life depressing? (I say this as my daughter's significant other literally lies dying of the ravages of too much alcohol consumption.)

Ok, I have convinced myself that this is a 5-star read. But just barely.

Wonderfully sad novel about the bathos of colonialism. After Coming Up for Air, this is probably my favorite Orwell novel.

George Orwell’s first novel, Burmese Days, is a damning look at British Imperialism and the effects of colonialism on both the British and the native populace. John Flory is an expatriate timber merchant who has lived in Burma for 15 years and become thoroughly jaded, spending his days drinking and whoring in a miserable haze. Then Dr Veraswami, his Indian friend, desperately implores Flory for membership to the European Club which he knows is the only thing that would save him from corrupt and evil local powermonger, U Po Kyin, who is out to destroy him.

With the expatriate community up in arms over the thought of a non-white club member, U Po Kyin’s machinations to usurp Veraswami’s intentions and become the club’s token native member, the arrival of the attractive but shallow Elizabeth Lackersteen, and an increasingly discontented native people, the stage is set for dramatic change for everyone.

The novel looks at the imperial bigotry of the British expatriates and the dirty side of colonialism, showing how the British Empire exploited third world countries under the guise of improving the “uncivilised” natives’ lives by imposing British culture upon them. But it also examines the ways colonialism damages the expatriates psychologically, and sometimes physically, as Flory says to Veraswami: “It corrupts us, it corrupts us in ways you can’t imagine.”

It takes an unflinching look at the racism and bigotry prevalent in the British expatriates’ views toward the natives and is at times hard to read for its unblemished dialogue filled with disgusting epithets uttered by many of the British characters, especially Ellis. Orwell is condemning of all of the British characters, including the anti-hero Flory, whom he writes as lazy, drunken sots sitting around aimlessly with an undeserved sense of superiority. Flory is perhaps more despicable as he is aware of the terrible nature of their behaviour but is too cowardly to stand up to them for fear of losing his comfortable existence.

But the novel isn’t entirely successful in its execution. It reads like Orwell attempting to do his versions of two classic novels - Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham - and falling short. His criticisms of the expatriate community and its effects on the Burmese population are certainly valid and are rendered in a convincing way, but they lack the memorable excoriation that Conrad gave in his novella - it simply doesn’t possess the same intensity. The same is true of the Flory/Elizabeth Lackersteen romance which feels like a compressed, less powerful rendition of the tragic courtship of Philip Carey and Mildred Rogers in Of Human Bondage.

In attempting to do two very different novels in one, much shorter novel - a searing critique of British colonialism and its effects, and a sweeping, complex romance - Orwell doesn’t accomplish either with any high degree of success. The romance is rushed and unconvincing, not to mention predictable, leading to a near hysterical and melodramatic finale that sits awkwardly in comparison to the rest of the novel. The damning of colonialism doesn’t really rise above mocking the easy targets of racist old British men - Orwell shies away from looking too deeply into U Po Kyin and Dr Veraswami’s lives, the latter of which is a key character to the story and is criminally unserved and largely ignored.

Burmese Days is a decent debut novel. Orwell spent a few years in Burma as a police officer and his experiences lend weight to the descriptions of the country - the reader can feel the stifling heat of the country and tense atmosphere between the natives and the British. And Burmese Days’ anti-establishment leanings and subversive, wry tone hint at the direction Orwell’s writing would take in later novels like Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. But while Burmese Days possesses Orwell’s effortless high quality writing and piercing eye for human behaviour, it’s at times unfocused and underdeveloped in its themes and direction, both aspects that Orwell would go on to become much better at in later books.

Debut novels are rarely perfect, and Orwell’s certainly isn’t, but some of its critiques at third world exploitation by richer, western countries, remain valid today and as such, Burmese Days is still a relevant novel, thought certainly one of his lesser efforts, by one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century.