Burmese Days - George Orwell

[Bern]

George Orwell’s second novel, published 1934, draws on his five years service in the Indian Imperial Police force. Critics claim it a youthful work, the language over-ripe and excessive, but it reads well to me, the story of a man approaching 35 or so, broken by the booze and lazy privilege afforded his class. The arrival of a young, attractive woman throws into stark relief the merit of Foley and the small expat community of Kyauktada, a remote village in the jungle. The man is roused by her presence but has also to contend with an attack on his Indian friend, Dr Veraswami.

"I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which my words were used partly for the sake of their sound. And in fact my first complete novel, Burmese Days.... is rather that kind of book." - George Orwell, Why I Write (1946)

If you like Graham Greene’s whiskey priests and quiet Americans, or the sense of impending tragedy in V.S. Naipaul’s African stories, you will enjoy this colonial novel by Orwell.

Burmese Days is available as an ebook free from http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79b/

[Thursday Mens reading group]

sounds good, might put this on the book club list..it seems most people have read "1984".