Based on George Orwell’s five unhappy years as a magistrate police officer in Burma in the 1920s, ‘Burmese Days’ crackles with mordant humour and keenly wrought observation. Much of the narrative is centred on the lubricated musings of a group of dissolute civil servants in a sleepy Burmese backwater. It’s certainly an indictment of colonialism, but one rendered with poise and subtlety — there’s plenty of avarice and corruption on both sides of the equation. On its longer itineraries, the Road To Mandalay stops in Katha, the colonial town that inspired the book.
