In one of the most intrepid travelogues in recent memory, Emma Larkin tells of the year she spent traveling through Burma, using as a compass the life and work of George Orwell, whom many of Burma's underground teahouse intellectuals call simply "the Prophet." In stirring prose, she provides a powerful reckoning with one of the world's least free countries. Finding George Orwell in Burma is a brave and revelatory reconnaissance of modern Burma, one of the world's grimmest and most shuttered police states, where the term "Orwellian" aptly describes the life endured by the country's people. BACKCOVER: "A truer picture of authoritarianism than anyone has written since, perhaps, Orwell himself."—Mother Jones "Mournful, meditative, appealingly idiosyncratic . . .…
"I think the main difference between Andrew’s and Emma’s books is that Andrew, who is a very gifted writer, makes places and events come alive; Emma makes people she meets come alive. She is more down-to-earth, probably because she speaks the language. The Burmese are quite aware of Orwell and his Burmese Days is quite famous there. The old joke in Burma is: ‘Have you read Burmese Days?’ ‘Yeah, it’s good but Orwell actually wrote a Burmese trilogy. The first was Burmese Days, about the colonial period, the second was Animal Farm, about the Burmese road to socialism and the third, 1984 , about the present regime.’ Both Andrew Marshall and Emma Larkin seized on an interesting concept – if you want to make Burma interesting to the rest of the world you have to find a westerner who is part of the story. It probably stems from this colonial myth about Burma, that it was this golden country in South East Asia, not as big and frightening as India but still accessible because it was a colony. It has the ring of eastern romanticism, with Kipling, the pagodas, the temple bells, and the beautiful women in their sarongs, etc. I must say that this is the silly part to a certain extent. I do find that many people who have spent time there become captivated with the place for a variety of reasons. I used to get letters from old British and American soldiers who were there during the Second World War. Some of the best memories of their lives were of that time in Burma."
