Burma Sahib
A Novel
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Chosen by John Irving in the New York Times as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century
"Paul Theroux has exploited this biographical lacuna with great shrewdness and gusto… his fictional account of Blair’s life there [Burma] is a valid and entirely credible attempt to add flesh to the skeletal facts we have of this time. […]this novel is one of his finest, in a long and redoubtable oeuvre." —New York Times Book Review
From the acclaimed author of The Mosquito Coast and The Bad Angel Brothers comes a riveting new novel of literary historical fiction exploring one of English literature’s most beloved and controversial figures—George Orwell—and the early years as an officer in colonial Burma that transformed him from Eric Blair, the British Raj policeman, into Orwell the anticolonial writer.
At age nineteen, young Eton graduate Eric Blair set sail for India, dreading the assignment ahead. Along with several other young conscripts, he would be trained for three years as a servant of the British Empire, overseeing the local policemen in Burma. Navigating the social, racial, and class politics of his fellow British at the same time as he learned the local languages and struggled to control his men would prove difficult enough. But doing all of this while grappling with his own self-worth, his sense that he was not cut out for this, is soon overwhelming for the young Blair. Eventually, his clashes with his superiors, and the drama that unfolds in this evocative biographical novel, will change him forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The stellar latest from Theroux (The Bad Angel Brothers) frames an insightful portrait of a young George Orwell (1903–1950) within a scathing depiction of British colonialism. The novel opens with an epigraph from Orwell's Burmese Days: "There is a short period in everyone's life when his character is fixed forever." What follows is Theroux's ambitious dramatization of that process for Eric Blair (Orwell's real name), who, having graduated from Eton, sails to Burma to become a policeman. There, Blair quickly becomes disenchanted with the shockingly foul attitudes of the British Raj. Though he attempts to toe the line, he soon realizes he will never live up to the brutal standards of his fellow officers ("What had not occurred to him then was that orders might be given out of spite, to humiliate and break your spirit"). He seeks solace in books and in the company of his dog, chickens, and ducks, as well as his "keeps," Burmese servants who share his bed at a couple of his posts, and the forward-thinking wife of a British timber merchant. But as often as not, Blair bungles his police work, exasperating his racist superiors. Eventually, he comes to recognize that the writer inside him wasn't the aloof officer he presented as a facade but rather "that other man who'd... hated every moment of his colonial captivity." With piercing prose, Theroux lays bare the fraudulent and fiercely despotic nature of the British Empire. This brims with intelligence and vigor.
