About this item
Over the years the American writer Emma Larkin has spent traveling in Burma, she's come to know all too well the many ways this brutal police state can be described as "Orwellian." The life of the mind exists in a state of siege in Burma, and it long has. But Burma's connection to George Orwell is not merely metaphorical; it is much deeper and more real. Orwell's mother was born in Burma, at the height of the British raj, and Orwell was fundamentally shaped by his experiences in Burma as a young man working for the British Imperial Police. When Orwell died, the novel-in-progress on his desk was set in Burma. It is the place George Orwell's work holds in Burma today, however, that most struck Emma Larkin. She was frequently told by Burmese acquaintances that Orwell did not write one book about their country--his first novel, Burmese Days--but in fact he wrote three, the "trilogy" that included Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.
About the Author
Finding George Orwell in Burma was also published in the UK (by John Murray under the title Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop) . In the US, Finding George won the Borders Original Voices Award for Non-Fiction in 2005. In the UK, the book was short-listed for the Index on Censorship's Freedom of Expression Award 2005. The Japanese-language edition, published by Shobunsha in Tokyo, won the Mainichi Shimbun's Asia Pacific Grand Prix Award in 2006.
