Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop

Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop

by Emma Larkin

John Murray $275

The Myanmese love to tell jokes. The language is full of wordplays and puns, and laughter is heard in every teashop - which is strange, given that reports about the world's longest surviving dictatorship, one of the last great totalitarian regimes, make it clear that Myanmar is no laughing matter.

In a country where giving voice to thoughts can lead to imprisonment, torture and death, laughter may be all that is left. As George Orwell wrote: 'Every joke is a little revolution.'

Bangkok-based journalist Emma Larkin has been visiting Myanmar for more than 10 years and most recently reported on Karen refugees in camps along the Thai-Myanmese border. She became fascinated by the writings of Orwell (pen name for Eric Blair), who spent five years as a policeman in Myanmar in the 1920s. Eton-educated, he joined the Imperial Police Force at 19 from a middle- class English family that had served the British empire for generations.

'I began to imagine that Orwell had seen something in Burma, had had some thread of an idea, that had worked its way into all of his writings,' writes Larkin, as she sets out to trace the young policeman's path from Mandalay to the mosquito-ridden Delta, Rangoon, Katha in the far north, and Moulmein, where his mother grew up.