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Books Related to Finding George Orwell in Burma Emma Larkin - ISBN: 0143037110
Emma Larkin's Burma - Rated
As an introduction to "Burmese Days" by Orwell, this book can be useful.
Emma Larkin travelled extensively through Myanmar and found a lot of people and went to a lot of places, succeeding in conveying to us some of the flavour and scents of the Burmese scene, but mostly she chases after the ghost of Orwell. Her main conclusion should have been that the ghost is no longer there.
Other travel books in Burma ("the Trouser People") try to achieve the same purpose using other authors, but the idea is the same.
Clearly Myanmar is one of the most fascinating, fulfilling and memorable travels one can make, and you can dispense altogether the pretexts to get to know it better.
As a political critique, this book is mixed and not very clear. Anyway, a good reading to anyone thinking about going there.
More books like this please - Rated
This is a great piece of travel/ history/ literature writing and I can't fathom the reviewer below's opinion. You can feel the compassion Emma Larkin has for Burma and it's wonderful people. A great trip, in a great country dealing with the work's of one of literature's greats.
Disappointing book - Rated
This book was not so much about George Orwell or even Myanmar but just the usual stereotypical condemnations of the Myanmar military government. I'm not a supporter of such government but the implied belief that the "American Way" of democracy would lead to improved conditions is simply not true (vis. Iraq). "Guided democracies" such as LKY's Singapore and Mahatir's Malaysia worked well to bring stability and economic growth.
The insight into the Burmese culture was very limited and Orwell seemed only to be brought out to justify the author's anti-SLORC/SPDC standpoint.
The American speaking local Burmese was much better originally demonstrated by Anthony Burgess with the Abang greeting Fenella Crab with his Hollywood patois.
When the author got to Katha I found myself a little more satisfied with the narrative but we had to yet again go down the anti SPDC avenue at every available opportunity.
If you want to know about travel in Burma then read Norman Lewis's "Golden Earth" and if you want to learn the inside story on Orwell then take a copy of "Orwell:The Life" by D J Taylor and regarded as the standard biography.
Only if you want the standard naive Western rant against the SPDC (mostly by people who never travelled there) do you need to read "Finding Orwell in Burma" which incidentally is the same book as "Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Tea shop".
