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Burmese Days: A Novel |  | Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Mariner Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Rating:  66 reviews
Sales Rank: 11071
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
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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| • | ISBN13: 9780156148504 | | • | Condition: USED - VERY GOOD | | • | Notes: |
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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 66
 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.
Apocolypse Then October 8, 2009
C. wood (Frankfurt am Main, Germany)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The jungle dominates this book as it did in the movie "Apocolypse Now" and "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. "Burmese Days" is the best of Orwell's first three novels. "A Clergyman's Daughter" and "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" are the other two. The novel is widely considered to be an autobiography of Orwell's service in the Burma police. The protagonist, Foley is a rather aimless lumber company executive who observes colonialism with a jaundiced eye and is considered a leftist by his peers for his pro-native views.
The book shows Orwell's keen insights into colonial sociology with the its social club politics and nightly drinking. The racism and economic exploitation needed to sustain the British Empire come to the fore in a variety of settings and the relationships between the characters. I remember the squalid prison scene and the mob riot vividly. Two Orwell essays "The Hanging" and "Shooting an Elephant" shed light the brutality and pretence of the British Empire. These two essays are valuable background sources that should be read before reading this book. I wonder about Orwell's true role in the police...did he have hidden dark tales related to the hanging?
Like the hop picking scene in "A Clergyman's Daughter" and the drunk tank incident in "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" this book has the rich detail work which reflected Orwell's journalistic genius. I can still remember the open air theatre and the colonial lackey with his betel nut red stained teeth and sinister grin mocking poor, sincere Foley. Orwell uses the jungle in the same way that Conrad did or O'Neil in his play "The Emperor Jones"-it becomes a heart of darkness- a verdant judgement place...wet green hell. The jungle... a fetid evil thing lying next to a foul river and a parched polo field occupied by a soulness military drone with clear blue eyes-a man who only loved horses...an anachronism from the nineteenth century. Other images: the cemetary pockmarked with rat holes waiting for Foley... Foley's neglected library filled with silverfish eaten books...Foley's rejected burmese mistress cursing him against the backdrop of looming dark jungle.
A darkly beautiful painting of a consuming jungle, yet Foley is as significant to the scene as a decayed stump. What we never learn about is Foley's motivations for never leaving Burma or the real reasons for his suicide or why he doesn't ever cooperate with the Nationalists...or anything really about Foley. Did duty make him stay in Burma or was it greed or laziness? In the end, the jungle...figurtively...overtakes Foley and he becomes consumed by rats in a forgotten grave. Again, Winston succumbing to Big Brother...defeated by the System. Foley is murdered by the contradictions of imperialism and the verdant riches of Burma. Orwell's characters are always consumed in the end.
Orwell's Indictment on British Colonialism October 5, 2009
fhuband
Excellent novel -- what an indictment of British colonialism! I have read 1984 and Animal Farm and I would have to say that Burmese Days is just as brilliant. Orwell's portrayal of Burma during colonial rule shows a world of racism, violence, loneliness, alcoholism, political corruption, and debauchery. The characters in the book are not very likeable but you have to sympathize with Flory who admires and socializes with the Burmese and tries to make the best of his situation in Burma. The rest of the characters are pretty despicable including the girl he falls for -- Elizabeth and her petty preferences and what she considers "beastly." Flory's colleagues at the Club are at best a bunch of lazy, drunken, racists -- especially Ellis. Orwell's uses of racial epithets by Ellis are very inflammatory but show the attitudes of the times. Overall, I would highly recommend this novel as one of the best to show a portrayal of life during colonial days and its negative effects.
IT'S NOT JUST ALL ABOUT BURMA October 1, 2009
Josef Bush (Phoenix, AZ)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As with HOMAGE TO CATALONIA, there is something in Orwell's writing that surpasses itself somehow. It isn't overblown in any way; it doesn't make claims or raise flags to impossible causes, and neither does it go for a good wallow in the bed. That is the character of its self-effacing superiority: there's Modesty, Proportion, and Perspective. But, there is humor, or irony, and it is of the most biting kind. Take this parody/snipped from a would-be Burmese newspaper:
"In these happy times, when we poor blacks are being uplifted by the mighty western civilisation, with its manifold blessings such as the cinematograph, machine-guns, syphilis, etc., what subject could be more insporing than the private lves of our European benefactors? We think therefore that it may interest our readers to hear somethig of events in the up-country district of Kyauktada. And especially of Mr. Macgruder, honored Deputy Commissioner of said district.
"Mr. Macgruder is of the type of the Fine Old English Gentleman, such as in these happy days, we have so many examples before our eyes. He is 'a family man' as our dear English cousins say. Very much a family man is Mr. Macgruder. So much so that he has already three thildren in the district of Kyauktada, where he has been a year, and in his last district of Shwemyo he left six young pregnancies behind him. Perhaps it is an oversight on Mr. Macgregor's part that he has left these young infants quite unprovided for, and that some of their mothers are in danger of starvation,' etc., etc."
Although this is a story about aching boredom, there's nothing quite predictable in it. (Occasionally you want to scream!) Somewhat autbiographical, BURMESE DAYS is largely based on Orwell's life as a career civil officer in Burma during the days of the Raj, when Britain ruled most of that part of the world. If there was anything to be madce out of that in 1934 -- before the Japanese swept all of it away, leaving the astounded English to starve in prison camps and/or to work in slave labor construction gangs -- it might have been simply, as the Japanese are said to have said, "Asia for the Asians," or merely that the English shipped only their dregs, the unemployable off to pull the levers of their colonial apparatus, for surely as you read you will be inclined to agree that it would be difficult to imagine a more despicable group of men (and women) anywhere. (Though as we look at Burma as it is in the news these days, we might wonder if there's been an improvement in their society, since libereation? Or we might not. It's their country after all. Being free, are they not free to be themselves?) Besides, the armature of the novel is a cunning, selfish scheme set in motion by a corrupt Burmese minor officlal to advance himself into the society of the ruling whites. To drink a whiskey, occasionally, at the local Club. Nevertheless...
Nevertheless, there are surprises even here in the sweltering monotony, and in plenty too. For this is a story about an unattractive Englishman, not young, who hates himself and his job and the people with whom he associates, who admires much of he native culture, and who has the bad luck to fall in love with an attractive-looking Englishwoman he thinks may, or at least can either love or understand him. But I go no further.
The story is a simple one and I will not break confidence with its author. It is a short book, and trust me, you will be amply rewarded by whatever effort you exert in reading the thing: the atmosphere, the descriptions all are rendered up with unusual vividness.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 66
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