My review can be found here: https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/24615-paul-theroux-goes-east-suez-burma-sahib

In 1922, 19-year-old Eric Blair, upon graduating Eton, joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. It is later when his career turns to writing that he takes the pen name of George Orwell. In Burma Sahib, Theroux fictionalizes the five years Orwell spent in Burma.

Upon arriving in Burma, Orwell begins his job as a police superintendent, and the cadets under his command were Burmese and Indian. At six foot two, he awkwardly towers over everyone else. He has difficulty fitting in with his unit, always feeling like an outsider and avoiding social situations while he seeks solitude to read and write poetry – Maugham and Jack London being favorite authors. He thought E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India “sounded like touristic tosh” and convinces himself he could be a better, more honest writer about the realities of colonialism. Even with his distaste for the wrongness and futility of the Raj, he still wants to fit in with the status quo and goes to great lengths to keep secret his “half-caste relatives” living in Moulmein. He is transferred to various places in Burma – Myaungmya, Twante, Syriam, Insein, Mandalay, Rangoon, Moulmein – moving with his boxes of books, his ducks and chickens in two large baskets, and his cat. He writes numerous unsent letters to his family, “I am not cut out for this” as he details his complaints, and shame over his failures. Yet he finds pleasure in nature, the various animals he acquires, and the women that come into his life.

This is a rich and fascinating narrative of Orwell’s life during the years that influence him as a writer. Theroux’s dialog is perfection, the banter between the men authentic. He was a complex and conflicted man, and Theroux shows how his life was shaped and formed by his service in Burma.

The Historical Novels Review, May 2024

Published by Mariner Books on February 6, 2024

One pleasure of reading lies in the vicarious opportunity to live a different life, if only for a few hours. One pleasure of reading Paul Theroux is that he transports the reader to unfamiliar places, to lives unlike our own. Burma Sahib takes the reader into the life of young Eric Blair as a supervising officer in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma during the 1920s, before Blair began to publish novels under the name George Orwell.

Blair hates the nickname “Lofty,” a reference to his height. He attended Eton, suffered the beatings by faculty and older boys, passed up the usual path of an Oxford education and a life of privilege, and is now taking a probationary position as assistant district superintendent of police in Burma. At the age of 19 (he will turn 20 in 1923), Blair has accepted a three-year contract and will need to repay the cost of his passage (and incur his father’s wrath) if he quits. The novel’s initial chapters begin with Blair’s travel on a ship that is sailing to Mandalay and follow him to his first posting.

Great Britain is administering Burma as a colony, taking its resources and offering a dubious path to “civilization” in return. The constables Blair supervises are Burmese and Indian. Natives automatically refer to Blair as Sahib, but he is expected to become a Pukka Sahib, a title that suggests both authority and an exemplar of gentlemanly behavior. Unfortunately, most Pukka Sahibs are gentlemanly only toward other white Europeans. They belittle, berate, and beat Burmese and Indians without giving their ungentlemanly behavior a second thought.

The novel follows Blair through various postings in Burma, most of which don’t end well. He has unfortunate encounters with a rogue elephant (Blair is too violent in the opinion of his superior) and with a crazy man (Blair is not violent enough). To his colonial bosses, elephants are more important than Asians because elephants help the timber industry make money and are less easily replaced than native workers.

Blair was raised to believe in the correctness of British colonialism and in the superiority of white men, the British foremost among them. His views are both reinforced and challenged as he performs the duties of a police superintendent. Blair has a grandmother and a few other relatives near Mandalay, but he is distressed to learn that his uncle Frank married a Burmese woman who gave birth to Kathleen, Frank’s “half caste” daughter. Blair is afraid that his superiors will learn about the relationship and will make disparaging comments about him behind his back. His disgust with people of mixed races eventually causes him to feel disgusted with himself for not judging people on their merits rather than their parentage.

Blair is pleased to encounter a friend from Eton in Burma and is equally distressed when he learns that the man is engaged to a Burmese woman. His concerns are defined less by his own prejudices against Asians than by his fear that he will be judged for having friends and relatives who are willing to mix with natives. At the same time, Blair enjoys the sexual company of Asian women. Sometimes he has to pay for it, but a couple of his postings come with a young Burmese woman who is expected to keep him happy at night.

Blair eventually agrees to sponsor an Indian — one of his few friends in Burma — as a member of his social club, knowing that he will be criticized and even ostracized for daring to bring a nonwhite through the club doors. Placing friendship above social position is a transformative decision, similar to Huck Finn’s moral decision to risk God’s wrath by helping Jim gain his freedom.

Theroux pays close attention to the minor characters in Burma Sahib, including Blair’s police colleagues and his relatives. He gives each of Blair’s lovers a distinct personality, but none of them (apart from the white woman with whom he has an affair) are happy with Blair’s unwillingness to make their relationship permanent. One of those women contributes to Blair’s undoing. The married white woman who occasionally shares his bed has a dirty mouth (by the standards of her time) and Blair finds it exciting to encounter naughty words and ideas that he never seen in books.

Blair's fullness as a character is impressive. Theroux paints Blair as an isolated man who prefers his own company to that of others. He holds his secrets dear, even when the secrets are not worth holding. He gives the impression of being a blank slate and avoids spreading clues about who he might really be. He hates the assumptions that the British make about him when they learn he attended Eton. Blair despises most people, whether they are white Europeans or Indians and Burmese who have darker skin. He only seems content when he is reading or struggling to write poetry. Jack London, Kipling, and Somerset Maugham have the most impact on his literary sensibility, while E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India fails to speak to his own experience.

Theroux is a masterful storyteller. His descriptions of 1920s Burma make the reader scratch mosquito bites, gag at the odor of open sewage, and feel disgust at white colonists who feel privileged to treat everyone with dark skin as a servant. If Theroux occasionally makes points a bit redundantly, those points are always important to the story. The primary point he makes in Burma Sahib relates to Blair’s ability to change his thinking (to become "woke" in current parlance) after observing the unfairness both of British colonialism and of racial or ethnic prejudice in all parts of the world. Blair’s formative experiences have a liberalizing (and thus humanizing) impact on Blair, turning him into the author who will later question authoritarian rule in 1984 and Animal Farm. Burma Sahib is a fascinating portrait of Blair’s intellectual and empathic development. At the same time, it is a fascinating story of a young man who comes of age in an unfamiliar and challenging world.

RECOMMENDED

Interesting, complex, dense - rich text, odd happenings, dark thoughts. This was a story of George Orwell as a young man. This was not an easy read, but I’m grateful for the cultural information.

[I know this is too long, 750 words. Feel free to edit it as you deem necessary for your purposes. I loved this book.]

Paul Theroux’s latest novel (his 30th, I think) is a fictional account of a formative period in the life of Eric Blair, the man who became George Orwell. The book comes with the usual disclaimers for a work of fiction about a real person: “ “Names [etc.] … are products of the author’s imagination. . . . not to be construed as real . . . any resemblance . . . entirely coincidental.”

But I don’t believe him. That is, I will grant that the British characters Blair interacts with in the book--all believable in their vocabulary, their backgrounds, their usually terrible behavior as British military policemen, their complacent acceptance of their role as colonial overseers for the empire, and their attitudes toward Blair’s struggles and failures in that role—are imagined.

And I will grant that the believable natives in Blair’s world—the Burmese, the Indians and the other “Orientals,” as Blair calls them—the men who obediently and zealously perform their duties as Blair’s subordinates in the police; the robbers and rapists and other miscreants who are the ostensible reason that the British police force exists at all and are the targets of British zest for cruelty; the angry mobs who threaten British control and are the real reason for the police; and the Indian merchant, fluent in English, with a most English last name (Thackeray!), who becomes Blair’s closest friend and Blair’s confessor—are imagined.

And I grant that the believable women Blair gets involved with—his selfish idealized attachments to his “keeps” (you’ll have to read the book to find out what that means) and to the one woman with whom he thinks he has fallen in love—and the vividly described—steamy, really—sex Blair has with them—are imagined.

But Theroux’s beautiful passages that immerse us in the landscape of Burma, its birds, its flowers, its trees and foliage, its rivers and creeks—its sensuality—certainly are not imagined.

And I am convinced that the Blair in Theroux’s novel is not a fiction. I refuse to believe that the Blair who spurns the usual progression of a British schoolboy from Eton to Oxbridge and instead goes to Burma—his Oxford as he says--to be a policeman, is imagined.

The Blair who says upon his arrival in Burma: “I hate this, I shouldn’t be here, I will never succeed”—is not imagined. The Blair who is self-conscious about being tall, who can feel clumsy and ugly, is ashamed of his parents, who is incapable of refusing an order even though he almost always wants to, who feels his role as a policeman is turning him into someone he despises, I believe this is the real Eric Blair.

When we see Blair recognize the inevitability of seeing his life in Burma through the eyes and words of Kipling or reading and admiring and wishing he could write like his heroes: Jack London, Butler, Wells, Lawrence, Maugham, and dismissing the writers—Huxley, Forster--he believes waste his time or get it all wrong, we are seeing the real Eric Blair.

When Theroux slowly reveals for us the emergence of Blair’s secret self—the rebel who despises authority, the diarist, the notetaker who sees salvation in writing-- who becomes the someone he had always known was inside him, “the inner man Blair thought of as George,” Theroux is telling us about the real Eric Blair.

Throughout the book Theroux gives us hints of some of the books and essays Eric Blair will write once he becomes George Orwell: Burmese Days, obviously; “Shooting an Elephant”; Down and Out in Paris and London (because “being a tramp was a proper vocation and a refuge”); Animal Farm (where some are more equal than others); and--when a colleague of Blair says at one point “the rat has its uses,” and Blair is appalled at seeing a dead man’s face that has been gnawed by a rat; and when Blair visits a prison built around a panopticon and asks himself “what if a whole society was a panopticon with a tyrant at its center in the watchtower,” an all-seeing eye--1984.

Theroux’s Blair thinks that readers “get to know fictional characters with more intimacy than any living person.” Well, by the end of Burma Sahib, the reader knows the formative experiences and ideas of Eric Blair—of George Orwell, the most influential writer of the 20th century-- more intimately than it is possible to know him from any biography. This is Paul Theroux’s great achievement in this great book.

I think I automatically resent any book that slows me down this much from my to-read list and that I have to struggle to make progress through. I seemed to read and read and read and still find myself 10%, or 11%, or 14% complete. (Note: 82% to 96%, for example, went by in a flash). Though it is a fairly long book, almost as long as this review, my progress was slow regardless of the length.

I was also frustrated by the fact that this disturbing man Eric Blair, and there’s no other way to describe him, is portrayed through a novel that is practically one continuous unfiltered inner monologue, also somewhat like this review. I have read plenty of historical fiction and some based on true characters, but generally not this invasive into the mind of a real person who we couldn’t otherwise know. Then, I find that there was no authors note (at least not in my advanced copy) at the end to give me a sense of clarity and finality and to know how much of this was true and from where the information was sourced.

Further frustrating, especially at the beginning, was how the book felt like it was written in the time in which it was set with the language as it would have been written and so many references to local terms and of the time, and his various specific references to the life of an Eton student, all beyond what a typical historical fiction novel would, and without explanations either within the sentences themselves or even through a glossary. I later read, after skipping forward and finding no authors notes, that Eric Blair, writing as George Orwell, did write a semi-autobiographical book about Burma, but it was apparently based on his final posting, which was just a drop in the bucket of his experiences in Burma.

If he was truly as troubled and as self absorbed, I find it both easy to see him able to write such disturbing books like “1984” and “Animal Farm”, but also shocked that the kid on the boat could even contemplate such expansive ideas. You can catch a tiny glimpse of the wheels of his mind turning though through his love or H. G. Wells, Kipling, and other provocative authors of the time.

If I was so frustrated by the slow progression, the lack of context clues, the literary license to put words in the mouth of an infamous author, and the unyielding cringeworthiness of the character’s behavior, how could I rate this book as highly as I did? I did finally turn a slight corner where I became just a tiny bit numb to the cringing, though certainly not entirely, and was invested in his journey and also occasionally hopeful once he began establishing a little empathy for the “natives “. It’s still pretty cringe-worthy, though you can also almost understand how the system sometimes forced him into his unacceptable, sometimes depending on your point of view, behavior.

I think the saving grace was when I searched and saw that he left Burma after five-and-a-half years due to ongoing complications of dengue fever. There were so many times when I felt that he would be thrown out of the police force in disgrace and to know that he left on acceptable, basically on a technicality, was somewhat comforting.

As an aside, I wondered throughout the second half of the book, if Blair/Orwell truly experienced and perpetuated the risky behavior, how long it took him to realize that his troubles with breathing and stamina were due to his incessant smoking. I also wondered about the women who eventually became his wives (though one for barely any time before his death) and about his child, neither of which ever seemed a possibility for young Eric Blair.

You will feel angst reading this book. You will want to give up but will feel a sense of accomplishment having made the five-plus- year, and that feels like almost as long as it took me to read this, journey with him in Burma where he came as a child and left as a slightly naïve man. How he could move on from there is the mystery to me.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for providing an unbiased review.

A man of his times, out of place!

Insecure, bullied ex-Etonian, Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) becomes a policeman in Burma. Blair is a tall, gangly chap who finds people and relationships a burden. His inner world is far richer. Blair is withdrawn. His passion is books. That list is certainly edgy. Huxley, Lawrence for a starters. Inside he’s a rebel, an agitator. However he’s nineteen years old and en route to Burma as a training policeman with the Imperial Forces.
“ [Blair’s] detachment remained, the hovering, watchful self, seeing the young man in the jacket and tie on deck, like a character in a story, knowing what the young man was hesitant to admit: that he was uncertain; that he really didn’t have a clue; that he was to be a policeman.
Blair’s life in Burma will be very different to the life he dreams of. A puzzle he has to somehow push through. An outsider trying to find his way in.
Burma has a strong culture dating down through the centuries, rich in food, in color and movement. Paradise with more than a sting in its tail. A culture disdained by its imperial masters. Welcome to the British Raj.
He’ll confront jingoism, culture wars, attitudes to mixed races, women, and troubling juxtapositions about life and viewpoints. He is introduced to pleasures of the flesh, he finds love only to realize its limitations. He canes prisoners and sees himself back at Eton being bullied. He hates his actions. He feels unclean. His conscience is troubled. However his survival is reckoned on sticking with the status quo—the Sahibs.
That means hiding the fact that he has two half caste uncles, and cousins. Relatives he wants to hide for reasons of his own acceptance, as much as for their protection from insular snobbery and disdain.
Burma, part of Britain’s far flung empire, a place the British cling to and impose their rule of law on.
The story of this troubled, non conformist, who conforms in the worst possible way, is broken open in the worst way possible. Blair finally escapes to a different and we can only hope more satisfying future.
Last we see Blair, he is immersing himself in sociological investigations in the north of England. He writes under his other persona, George. The name he gave his writing self in Burma.
An intriguing novel that immerses the reader in the Imperial Police Force and has the main character pondering questions. Yet those questions are silenced, submerged by tradition and rules, unwritten and written. Judgement to the letter of the law with very little scope for compassion. Blair becomes part of the very system he condemns. A proper Burma Sahib, on the outside. Inside he’s a tortured, conflicted soul.
Eric Blair is a character not soon forgotten. George Orwell didn’t. This fictionalised tale of Orwell’s early years is thought provoking and brilliant!

A Mariner Books ARC via NetGalley.
Many thanks to the author and publisher.
Please note: Quotes taken from an advanced reading copy maybe subject to change
(Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.)

Profound changes occur in a young misanthropic Englishman who travels to India to jumpstart a law career; Read this for the fascinating characterizations and human insight,, and stay for the descriptions of geographical beauty the main character finally allows to affect him.

At an age when many people have been retired for years, Pal Theroux is continuing his career as a writer of immeasurable talent and seemingly limitless curiosity. This book could not be more different from the last two of his that I've read -- one about a legendary surfer and a novel woven out of his imagination. Here we learn of the early life of George Orwell, when he was still Eric Blair, newly hatched from Eton in 1921 and sent to Burma to join the police force. It is supposed to toughen him into manhood, which it does, but it also plants the seeds of the writer he is to become. It strengthens his values and opens his eyes in ways he had never thought possible. Burma Sahib is also a picture of colonized Burma, complete with the plummy accents of the invaders and the inherent decency of their charges. Being Theroux, the author presents almost a travelogue of the country, transferring Blair from post to post in order to paint an in depth picture. I was interested to note that in the acknowledgements credit was given to the late Jonathan Raban, another author as proficient in writing fiction as well as travel experience.

Paul Theroux is AMAZING…. phenomenally talented….he can write pretty much anything: (be it elegant, strange, absurd, brutal, sly, hilarious, erotic, mysterious, or **electrifying* adventurous, he puts all the eggs in the basket) .….
He is both a brilliant novelist and a brilliant non-fiction travelogue writer. I’ve ‘equally’ enjoyed several of his fiction and non-fiction books. —. [mentioning books I’ve read]
….Mosquito Coast, (fiction)….
….The Great Railway Bazar (non-fiction),
….Hotel Honolulu (fiction),
….Under the Wave at Waimea, (non-fiction),
….Blinding Light (fiction/steamy and suspenseful),
….Deep South (non-fiction),
….The Elephant Suite, (fiction),
….The Happy Isles of Oceania Paddling (non-fiction:fascinating exploration):

With the same dedicated heart that I read Mary Roach’s popular science-humorous books (I can ‘always’ count on a fascinating-interesting read) — is with the same dedication that I read Paul Theroux’s books….(a self-described graphomanic)….
Basically I’m a Roach &Theroux fan….(both completely different—yet both ‘love-appraisable-count-on-able’!!!)

In “Burma Sahib”, we follow Eric Blair/George Orwell…on an adventurous journey ‘to’ and ‘in’ Burma. ….
…off to be a policeman - which he hated. (after graduating from Eton) - which he also mostly hated.
Themes of bigotry,injustice, corruption, and colonialism fly high.

Theroux gave us an intelligent mystery—and an historical story in Burma during the British empire… and a story of George Orwell’s coming-of-age years.
The best part was being ‘with’ Eric (Orwell’s birth name) and his inner voice throughout.
The growth and choices Eric makes (wonderful to follow the books and authors he read too)….is vigorous and refreshing.

“The battlefield between good and evil runs through the heart of every man”.
—Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

Wonderful Book!!!

“Don’t let us down, Eric,” his father told him gruffly.

Eric had played his role in school and was now playing his role as a policeman in colonial Burma. And he hated it, all of it. He hated the club but forced himself to go, pretending to care about a billiards game. He abhorred the racism of his superiors, how they held the native’s lives so cheaply, their diminishment of the men as savages, their easy use of the women. Eric mimicked their words publicly and privately mulled on seditious thoughts. He took native lovers, against the rules. His bosses held him accountable for his naivety and errors and the failings of the men who did all the work for him. He was imprisoned as much as the men he arrested. And one day, he dropped his facade and cursed his commander.

Eric had an alter ego–George–who broke rules. After he left Burma, he became George Orwell.

I was captivated by this novelization of Orwell’s early life from a nineteen-year-old beginning a career for which he was entirely unsuited to his leaving Burma at age twenty-five.

Colonialism in all its ugliness is revealed. The details change, but human nature does not. The powerful prey on the weak and vilify those who rise up demanding justice and self-determination. The Colonists justify stealing the country’s wealth by claims of bringing ‘civilization’ and ‘order’ and technology.

Eric’s reading takes us into the pivotal books of the time, D. H. Lawrence and Somerset Maugham and H. G. Wells and Rudyard Kipling and E. M. Forster, and he is both inspired by them and critical of their lack of the deep first-hand knowledge he has gained. Eric begins writing his own novel, hoping his alter ego George will use this hard-earned knowledge to pen truths the others don’t know, the cruelty and inhumane business of empire.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

I’ve read several of Paul Theroux’s nonfiction books (having just finished The Last Train to Zone Verde), primarily travelogues with deep insights into his various journeys, but this was my first foray into his fiction. I was delighted that he carries through with his usual marvelous depictions of people and places foreign to most readers, in this case Burma of the early 20th century. In Burma Sahib, he fictionalized the life of George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm and 1984. The story follows the primary character, Eric Arthur Blair, a quiet, standoffish, nineteen-year-old graduate of Eton who leaves his home and parents in England and goes to Burma to be part of the British police there. He spends most of his sea voyage there reading. On arrival in Burma, he’s on probation and is transferred hither and yon because of his patchy performance. He never fits in. Over time, he becomes sympathetic to the Burmese and comes to realize that due to the cruelty of the British rules, the abject poverty of the locals, the exploitation of the land and the people, the British Empire is doomed. At length, when he returns home on medical leave, belly-up on the heels of a scandal, he drops out of society and researches the depths of London.

Theroux manages to show the gradual change in Blair’s personality as he sweats in Burma. The depth of personality and personal growth are well-demonstrated throughout. Equally impressive are Theroux’s in-depth views of Burma and the various substations where Blair is stationed. Each spot has its own personality. Having lived in Asia for a time, I can attest that even one hundred years later, those shades of colonialism remain deeply imbedded.

A good mystery that really kept me going. This is a great weekend read to escape in. Thanks for the opportunity to read as I thoroughly enjoyed.

I really enjoyed this historical fiction elements, it had everything that I was looking for in this type of book. The characters were what I wanted and glad they worked with the period set. Paul Theroux has a great writing style that worked overall.

Following graduation at Eton, young Eric Blair is set for Burma in the 1920's. He will be trained via the British Empire to oversee the local police man. Blair chafes at the abject racism and has a hard time making friends and fitting in. He is moved from station to station as he is unable to make his supervisors proud.

As Theroux weaves in the story of George Orwell he paints a deep and realistic picture of Burma. Theroux is well known for his travelogues, and a fictional account in a country such as Burmas highlights his abilities. A wonderful take on British Rule, the idea of other and what Orwell thought and experiences when penning his famous works.
#BurmaSahib #PaulTheroux #Mariner

I loved this book. Not only do I have great admiration for Paul Theroux, but I was completely captivated by how well he recreated the settings and brought the reader into life in Burma during the time of the great British empire.

The storylines follow one main character, Eric Blair, who after leaving Eton heads to Burma to make his way as a policeman. He is a not a joiner, a bit of a loner and very bookish. He arrival in Burma lands him in Mandalay, where he studies, trains and preps for his duties as a policeman. He chaffs at the rules for dress, rules for dealing with Indians and Burmese, the clubs, and the alien daily life. It all seems overwhelming to Blair, as he is thrown into the deep end of life amidst the overwhelming heat.

At each station he is assigned he must prove himself. He must do the dirty work of rounding up locals, making arrests and following orders even if he does not agree. Many times he fails, and is forced to move to another station as he has disappointed his superiors. As he moves around the country, he starts to develop a distaste for the British control of Burma. He sees the cruelty of the rules, the fake superiority of his British rulers and secretly mocks the entire system.

Theroux gives you such a deep sense of Burma. We even see use of the local dialect, the smells of the trees and flowers, the teak, rivers and even the oppressive heat feels like a character. Giving the reader this much information brings us close into the heart of the story.

Eric Blair does his best to fit in, but he just can't seem to.

I did read Burmese Days many years ago and I am a big fan of George Orwell. I think having Theroux take a crack at this topic has brought fresh insights and an outside prospective.

I am so thankful for Netgalley, and of course Mariner Books and Edleweiss for giving me this opportunity to be enchanted by such a fine work.

This is my first work from the author and since this particular period in colonial history is of great interest to me, I was really looking forward to getting my hands on this.

The author's use the of the language is evocative of the time period and he deftly handles the various characters, some fictional, some obliquely related to real.

I am glad to say that I enjoyed the book thoroughly and will be seeking more works from the author.

This is very definitely a period novel - full of archaic language even a well reader will have to repeatedly stop to look up nearly lost words. The pace is beyond languid but full of interesting descriptions. From about the fifth page I could see this novel as a long movie or a mini-series, something along the lines of Beecham House on PBS. You can smell the smells and feel the heat and dust on the pages as you read.

Anyway, the pace is so very, very slow that I'll be setting this book aside for awhile, until I have more time.

Update: I ultimately decided against reading further because I found the utter contempt (probably very realistic at the time) the Brits had for anyone non-white/not a whitr British citizen appalling -- the way the men/boys spoke and treated people was very uncomfortable to read. Again, this is probably very likely true but I didn't feel the need to subject myself to a whole book of it.

I didn't know anything about Orwell's formative years prior to reading this book, and it was such an interesting novel! Theroux's use of language and his evocative use of the setting really transport you to Burma and help you to see why Blair began his transformation into George Orwell,.

I’ve read several of Theroux’s travel books, but “Burma Sahib” was my first foray into his fiction. Within the very first chapter, I found myself familiarly ensconced by the same descriptive prowess that has previously and very effectively transported me to numerous places across the globe in the author’s nonfiction works. 1920s British-ruled Myanmar came alive in all of its complexity (albeit viewed specifically through the inescapably biased lens of the book’s main character Englishman). No matter where the narrative took me, from quiet-ish delta towns to lively Rangoon, I found myself immersed.

Equally as impressive was Theroux’s management of Blair/Orwell. I confess I was a little wary at first, having read too many books where an author has taken a character from history and turned them into someone who shares nothing more than a name with their real-world counterpart. But while I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no expert on Blair in any way shape or form, the complex character that Theroux presented to me ended up matching extremely well with what little I knew of the actual man behind some of the influential works of the 20th century. And honestly, even if I went into this book with absolutely no idea about whose life it was based upon, I would still find it to be an engaging read about a bookish and almost cripplingly self-conscious man who arrives reluctantly in Burma as a fresh cog in the machinery of empire, and proceeds to only grow further adrift and disillusioned from there.

Overall, a very enjoyable reading experience!