Burmese Days

George Orwell

1st World Publishing, Incorporated, Jul 1, 2005 - Fiction - 376 pages

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - U Po Kyin, Sub-divisional Magistrate of Kyauktada, in Upper Burma, was sitting in his veranda. It was only half past eight, but the month was April, and there was a closeness in the air, a threat of the long, stifling midday hours. Occasional faint breaths of wind, seeming cool by contrast, stirred the newly drenched orchids that hung from the eaves. Beyond the orchids one could see the dusty, curved trunk of a palm tree, and then the blazing ultramarine sky. Up in the zenith, so high that it dazzled one to look at them, a few vultures circled without the quiver of a wing. Unblinking, rather like a great porcelain idol, U Po Kyin gazed out into the fierce sunlight. He was a man of fifty, so fat that for years he had not risen from his chair without help, and yet shapely and even beautiful in his grossness; for the Burmese do not sag and bulge like white men, but grow fat symmetrically, like fruits swelling. His face was vast, yellow and quite unwrin-kled, and his eyes were tawny. His feet-squat, high-arched feet with the toes all the same length-were bare, and so was his cropped head, and he wore one of those vivid Arakanese longyis with green and magenta checks which the Burmese wear on informal occasions. He was chewing betel from a lacquered box on the table, and thinking about his past life.

What people are saying

Review: Burmese Days

User Review  - Marks54 - Goodreads

This is George Orwell's first novel, based on his experiences as a police officer in Burma after WWI. It is a dark story that is most notable as a harsh criticism of the British Raj in the final years ...

Review: Burmese Days

User Review  - MJ Nicholls - Goodreads

George's fictionalised account of his time in Burma with our brave old lads in the Indian Imperial Police. Flory is our antihero, desperately striving for decency and brotherhood and love in a moral ...

About the author

George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair in 1903 in Motihari in Bengal, India and later studied at Eton for four years. Orwell was an assistant superintendent with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. He left the position after five years and then moved to Paris, where he wrote his first two books, Burmese Days and Down and Out In Paris. Orwell then moved to Spain to write but decided to join the United Workers Marxist Party Militia. After being decidedly opposed to communism, Orwell served in the British Home Guard and with the Indian Service of the BBC during World War II. He started writing for the Observer and was literary editor for the Tribune. Soon after he published the world-famous book, Animal Farm, which became a huge success for Orwell. It was then towards the end of his life when Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. George Orwell died on January 23, 1950 in London.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Burmese Days
• Author: George Orwell
• Publisher: 1st World Publishing, Incorporated, 2005
• ISBN: 1421808307, 9781421808307
• Length: 376 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Classics