George Orwell's novels

Preface by Giancarlo Rossini

Preface by Giancarlo Rossini“Something had turned inside Flory's heart. It was one of those moments in which one realizes a great change, the devastation that has occurred in one's existence. Suddenly he realized that, in the depths of his heart, he was happy to be back. That country he hated was now his homeland, his home. Scenes like that, the yellow evening light, the old Indian mowing the grass, the screeching of the chariot wheels, the herons in droves, all was better known and dearer than England. He had taken root, perhaps his deepest, in a foreign country. "

Flory is the protagonist of Burmese Days George Orwell's first novel published in the United States in 1934, and later, in 1935, in Great Britain. The idea of ​​the novel originates from the writer's direct experience in these places: in 1922 he had in fact enlisted in the Indian Imperial Police and spent five years in Burma, postponing it until 1927. The novel was not well received in his homeland, indeed strongly hindered, precisely because he was critical of the English colonial policy of which the writer was a profound connoisseur also for other personal vicissitudes: Eric Arthur Blair (this is the real name of George Orwell ) was born on June 25, 1903 in Motihari, Bengal. His father, of Scottish descent he was a civil servant employed in India. The mother, of French descent, grew up in eastern Burma.

"After completing school I worked for the Imperial Police in Burma for five years, but the job did not suit my abilities at all: so I resigned when I came home on leave in 1927. I wanted to become one writer, and I lived most of the next two years in Paris, supporting myself with my savings, writing novels that no one would publish and which I subsequently destroyed. When I ran out of money, I worked for a while as a dishwasher, then I returned to England where I did a series of poorly paid jobs, such as teaching, with intervals of unemployment and desperate poverty ... (It was the time of depression) .

Almost all the events described in “Down and out in Paris and London” actually happened but at different times, and I intertwined them to create a story that worked ».

After the Burmese experience, George Orwell will dedicate himself with absolute coherence and intellectual honesty to the search for the new community in which to put down roots; he will look for her among the vagabonds, the marginalized, the beggars of London and Paris, and then among the miners of northern England (The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937), and he will find her even briefly among the Spanish militiamen during the civil war (Homage to Catalonia, 1938) ".

Burmese Days is not considered the only book born from a long stay in Burma but the first of a trilogy that includes the two great masterpieces of Orwell, Animal Farm and 1984. American writer Emma Larkin, author of Finding George Orwell in Burma, after spending an intense period in Burma, reconstructs the life and work of Orwell, intertwining everything with the fundamental experience in this part of Asia where today Orwell is remembered as a "Prophet". This text by Emma Larkin belongs to three literary genres simultaneously: travel literature, political essay, biography. An excellent read for those who are preparing to visit this distant, fascinating but deeply complex land.