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Burmese Days: A Novel |  | Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Mariner Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Seller: loislane29
Rating:  70 reviews
Sales Rank: 8915
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 0156148501
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780156148504
ASIN: 0156148501
Publication Date: March 20, 1974
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Imagine crossing E.M. Forster with Jane Austen. Stir in a bit of socialist doctrine, a sprig of satire, strong Indian curry, and a couple quarts of good English gin and you get something close to the flavor of George Orwell's intensely readable and deftly plotted Burmese Days. In 1930, Kyauktada, Upper Burma, is one of the least auspicious postings in the ailing British Empire--and then the order comes that the European Club, previously for whites only, must elect one token native member. This edict brings out the worst in this woefully enclosed society, not to mention among the natives who would become the One. Orwell mines his own Anglo-Indian background to evoke both the suffocating heat and the stifling pettiness that are the central facts of colonial life: "Mr. MacGregor told his anecdote about Prome, which could be produced in almost any context. And then the conversation veered back to the old, never-palling subject--the insolence of the natives, the supineness of the Government, the dear dead days when the British Raj was the Raj and please give the bearer fifteen lashes. The topic was never let alone for long, partly because of Ellis's obsession. Besides, you could forgive the Europeans a great deal of their bitterness. Living and working among Orientals would try the temper of a saint." Protagonist James Flory is a timber merchant, whose facial birthmark serves as an outward expression of the ironic and left-leaning habits of mind that make him inwardly different from his coevals. Flory appreciates the local culture, has native allegiances, and detests the racist machinations of his fellow Club members. Alas, he doesn't always possess the moral courage, or the energy, to stand against them. His almost embarrassingly Anglophile friend, Dr. Veraswami, the highest-ranking native official, seems a shoo-in for Club membership, until Machiavellian magistrate U Po Kyin launches a campaign to discredit him that results, ultimately, in the loss not just of reputations but of lives. Whether to endorse Veraswami or to betray him becomes a kind of litmus test of Flory's character. Against this backdrop of politics and ethics, Orwell throws the shadow of romance. The arrival of the bobbed blonde, marriageable, and resolutely anti-intellectual Elizabeth Lackersteen not only casts Flory as hapless suitor but gives Orwell the chance to show that he's as astute a reporter of nuanced social interactions as he is of political intrigues. In fact, his combination of an astringently populist sensibility, dead-on observations of human behavior, formidable conjuring skills, and no-frills prose make for historical fiction that stands triumphantly outside of time. --Joyce Thompson
Product Description
Orwell draws on his years of experience in India to tell this story of the waning days of British imperialism. A handful of Englishmen living in a settlement in Burma congregate in the European Club, drink whiskey, and argue over an impending order to admit a token Asian.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 70
a lesser-known Orwell work July 9, 2010
Justin B. Roumelis (FL USA)
I, like many readers, first knew about George Orwell from his most famous novel, "1984", also reading "Animal Farm"
in high school. This novel was written before these, and is said to be a reflection of his service in the Indian colonial police. The main character John Flory reminds me of "1984"s Winston Smith, a man who is unsure of his place in society, and doubts the value and credibility of his profession. His "friends" prove to be uncaring, yet he has many flaws himself, that lead to two failed relationships with two very different women. I feel that this book has an anti-imperialst tone to it, and the ending was a bit surprising, if depressing. Definitely worth a read, as Orwell makes it easily accessible and reasonably interesting.
Not Your Ordinary Travel Book or Literary Masterpiece April 25, 2010
Robert E. Olsen (McLean, VA United States)
There is something to be said for journalists who write novels, and although he was never on the payroll of The Daily Mail or The Guardian, George Orwell, the author of Burmese Days, was at bottom a journalist. Like Tom Wolfe, for example, Orwell creates fictional characters who are too riddled with insecurities, too motivated by class pretentions, too comical in their relationships with the world to serve to explicate matters of the heart, soul, and other conventions of literary fiction. As a result Orwell does not so much get into his characters as expose them for the weak, banal, conniving, self-deluded, semi-aware creatures that they are -- creatures of their times, never to be envied.
The times, in the case of Burmese Days, are the late-1920's, near the end of the British Raj in Upper Burma, then a backwater of the Empire inhabited by teak exploiters, Christian missionaries, and other expats imposing themselves uneasily -- economically, militarily, sexually -- on the local underclass. When they are not working, the Brits in Burmese Days, like their contemporaries in East Africa, pass their days drinking, gossiping, whoring, shooting, and encapsulating themselves in a club for foreigners. Into this mix comes Elizabeth Lackersteen, a fresh-faced young English girl of 20, recently orphaned, whose only real chance in life is to find a husband. Now. Pursuing her are James Flory, a lumber mill manager more than twice her age who has spent 15 desolate years in the provinces; a certain Verrall, a smooth dancing officer in the Military Police, in town on special assignment, who despises people but loves polo ponies; and Elizabeth's own libidinous drunk uncle, each for his respective end. Meanwhile a good-hearted Indian physician is opposed by a conniving Burmese politician and judge for the sole ceremonial local membership in the club for foreigners.
These two slender plots cross against a backdrop of lush descriptions of Burmese society, customs, architecture, and the greater outdoors. The plots lead eventually to an ending and forward-flashing epigraph, the thrust of which is that people get what they deserve. There is not much new there. It is the backdrop -- the travel writing, if you will -- that sticks with the reader. Orwell writes with a naturalist's disposition.
Here he is describing a hunt: "They set out. The side of the village away from the creek was protected by a hedge of cactus six feet high and twelve thick. One went up a narrow lane of cactus, then along a rutted, dusty bullock-cart track, with bamboos as tall as flagstaffs growing densely on either side. The beaters marched rapidly ahead in single file, each with his broad dah laid along his forearm. The old hunter was marching just in front of Elizabeth. His longyi was hitched up like a loincloth, and his meagre thighs were tattooed with dark blue patterns, so intricate that he might have been wearing drawers of blue lace. A bamboo the thickness of a man's wrist had fallen and hung across the path. The leading beater severed it with an upward flick of his dah; the prisoned water gushed out of it with a diamond-flash. After half a mile they reached the open fields, and everyone was sweating, for they had walked fast and the sun was savage."
In 2002 a Time writer went back to Upper Burma to look for the remains of Orwell's world and found it. That is an interesting enough travelogue in itself. But read the original first. It is a good read.
 On the old side. February 14, 2010
A. Carson (PA USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Although pretty aged- it showed up in great condition for being a 196-- something book! The cover was a little cracked but that was about it!
Excellent Book Marred by Unrelenting Pessimism February 6, 2010
Charles Calvert (Bellevue, WA United States)
This excellent book is marred by Orwell's relentless pessimism. His searing portrait of colonial life in a small down near Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma), weaves a dark, perhaps unintentionally satiric portrait of a miserable cast of characters living a dissolute life in the waning days of the British Empire.
The energetic prose and plotting feel modern despite the references to topis and the occasional old-school British matron with her Agatha-Christie style schemes to marry off young women. The bitter taste of unrepentant racism is discernable on nearly every page, while the sharply drawn characters and their minutely detailed weaknesses hem in the reader and lead inexorably down the carefully laid path to the tightly written ending.
Orwell's characters are so relentlessly banal and weak minded that I find it hard to believe that such a motley crew was ever assembled in one place. I suspect that it is the author's pessimism that conjures up depravity where common human weakness alone existed. Nevertheless, the racism depicted here was and is real, and
Orwell is an excellent psychologist, and his portraits of lost characters and their fatal temptations are quite believable.
One of the unique peculiarities of this book is the character of the female lead. A romance lies at the heart of this book, but it is a romance with a sardonic twist, since the character of the heroine is not at all certain. You will need to read through to the end before deciding what to make of her. The central character in the book is also plagued by glaring faults, which I found forgivable only by supposing that he might be in a part a highly self-critical portrait of the author himself.
This book is entertaining, and presents a vivid and highly compelling portrait of a fascinating time and place that is not often well documented. Despite the excellent prose, crisp and compelling character portraits, the tightly woven plot and strong, admirable themes, I give this book only four stars, due to its unrelenting pessimism.
Colonialism in general, and the British oppression of the Burmese in particular are subjects that well deserve a scathing critique, and I have no argument with Orwell's attack on these wretched institutions. It is not the book's message that put me off, but rather the gloomy depiction of human nature. A world no better than this is not worth inhabiting, and I don't see the point in praising too highly a book that is so stringently life denying.
 sense of place January 6, 2010
pepper
In this book, Orwell proved that he is the master of creating a sense of place. I felt like I had been in Burma and knew all these people.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 70
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