In an interview on Burma

Emma Larkin’s Finding George Orwell in Burma is also something of a political travelogue. How does her approach differ from Andrew Marshall’s?

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.

Emma’s book was partly inspired by a Burmese joke about Orwell. Did you ever come across this in your own experience?

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.

There is something else that I find curious – this romantic attachment that Burma seems to inspire. Emma Larkin attributes it in part to the legacy of Kipling’s poem Mandalay. What do you make of this?

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.