Burmese Days

Paul Theroux's new novel is a fictionalised account of George Orwell's time in Burma

- Bill Aitken

BURMA SAHIB

A Novel

by Paul Theroux HAMISH HAMILTON (PENGUIN BOOKS)

₹1,199; 390 pg

After a slew of biographies on George Orwell seeking either to add to his laurels as a genius of grandee standing or (more often) unseat him from sharing the literary firmament with the great English essayist Dr Johnson, comes Paul Theroux's fictionalised account of the awkward young probationer's Burma days. Theroux reconstructs Orwell's embarrassing and disastrous attempt to become a pukka sahib in the "spruce and abusive" Indian Imperial Police in Burma, recapturing brilliantly the visually loud colours, pungent odours, dowry deaths, gang rapes and brutal investigations of rural colonial Burma.