Burmese days - George Orwell

In the
Burmese provincial town of Kyauktada, the world-weary John Flory - a
thirty-something English teak dealer - leads a life of quiet disillusionment,
hardly mixing with the natives or the expat community, and deriving some
comfort only from his conversations with an Indian friend, Doctor Veraswami,
and the attentions of his local mistress. His prospects seem to improve when
he meets the orphaned niece of a timber merchant, Elizabeth Lackersteen, who
appears to reciprocate his feelings of love - but the arrival on the scene of
another suitor, the boorish police officer Verrall, and the scheming of a
disgruntled local magistrate threaten to shatter Flory's dreams and put him
on a path to tragedy.


Based on the author's own experiences in Burma as a young officer in the
Indian Imperial Police, Burmese Days - here presented in the version
published in Britain in 1944, which follows the text of its first American
edition - is George Orwell's debut novel, invaluable both as a faithful description
of life in Burma during the twilight of the British Raj and as an expos of
the failings of colonial rule.