Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop - Softcover

Larkin, Emma

3.96

3,569 ratings by Goodreads

9780719556951: Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0719556953 ISBN 13: 9780719556951

Publisher: John Murray, 2005

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Burma, where George Orwell worked as an officer in the Imperial police force, is currently ruled by one of the oldest and most brutal military dictatorships in the world. Emma Larkin presents a side to the country that the regime does not want revealed: a hidden world that can be found only in whispered conversations, covered books and the potent rumours wafting like vapours through the country's teashops.
Starting in the former royal city of Mandalay, she travelled through the moody delta regions on the edge of the Bay of Bengal, to the mildewed splendour of the old port town Moulmein, and ending her journey in the mountains of the far north, in the forgotten town Orwell used as the setting for Burmese Days.
Visiting the places where Orwell lived and meeting the people who live there today, Emma Larkin gives a vivid and moving portrait of a people for whom reading is resistance.

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Review:

'Engaging ... [a] superb account of life in Burma's exotic tragi-comedy' (Observer 20040808)

'What shines out is the resilient, subversive humour of the people whom she meets' (Financial Times 20040814)

'[A] sympathetically zealous account of investigative travel ... Larkin traces the Orwellian parallels with admirable assiduity and nicely controlled indignation' (Sunday Telegraph 20040815)

'Emma Larkin knows her history' (Independent 20040909)

'The only Western writer who speaks proper Burmese, knows Burma... well, and has been able to record their feelings.' (Times Literary Supplement 20040917)

'An elegant travelogue through Burma, using Orwell's sojourn and experiences there as a template' (Spectator 20041127)

'Never less than fascinating.' (Sunday Times 20040822)

'An evocative account of a tropical paradise ruled by a despotic regime.' (The Times 20040822)

'Emma Larkin's book hums with such evocative sentences; they concentrate our minds about Burma.' (Literary Review 20040822)

'The result is not only an exploration of one of the twentieth century's most important writers, but an expose of one of its greatest political tragedies.' Denise Heywood (Traveller 20050301)

About the Author:

Emma Larkin was born and brought up in Asia. She studied the Burmese language at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London while taking her masters in Asian History. She has been visiting Burma for almost ten years.

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