This novel is inspired by George Orwell - but don’t call it Orwellian

In Shooting an Elephant (1936) the English essayist and novelist George Orwell described working as a sub-divisional imperial police officer in Moulmein, lower Burma (Myanmar): “I was hated by large numbers of people … and I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing.” In the same essay, Orwell remembered a moral quandary he faced after his superiors in the police told him an elephant was running wild in the local bazaar. Should he shoot the animal?

“Orwell shot the elephant to prove that he was a good colonialist,” Paul Theroux explains from his home in Hawaii. The 82-year-old American novelist and travel writer has just published Burma Sahib. The colourful and well-crafted historical novel begins in 1922. Eric Blair (as he was then known, before taking the pseudonym, George Orwell) was 19 years old and had just completed his education at Eton College. In the novel’s opening scene, we meet Blair on board the ship to Burma.

Paul Theroux sets out to humanise George Orwell in his latest novel.Credit: New York Times

Theroux’s fictional account follows Blair over the next five years, as police work takes him to various locations across Burma. For research, Theroux read seven biographies of Orwell and drew from his work.

“Burmese Days (1934) was helpful to read, but the novel is actually not really about Orwell’s own experience about living and working in Burma,” says Theroux. “The main character, John Flory, is much older than Blair was at that time.”

Orwell mentioned Burma, albeit sparingly, in other writings too. In his essay The Hanging (1931), for instance, Orwell recalled laughing with his police colleagues after sending a Burmese man to the gallows. The country is also referenced in The Road to Wigan Pier (1936), and Homage to Catalonia (1938). But “very little is known about Orwell’s private life in Burma”, Theroux points out. “We have no letters from this time, so in this novel I wanted to humanise Orwell, who was such a contradiction,” he says. “I really don’t know what people mean when they say Orwellian.”

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Ostensibly, the term (which came into use after the success of Orwell’s final novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four) is used to denote a political system in which the government tries to control every part of people’s lives. Like Kafkaesque, though, Orwellian has become a cliché that is typically misunderstood and misused. It has also elevated Orwell to the status of literary sainthood.

Clearly, though, Orwell was no saint. “Orwell hated Catholics and in The Road to Wigan Pier he admitted that he regularly used to hit his servants,” Theroux explains. “And in Shooting an Elephant, Orwell describes wanting to stick a bayonet in a Buddhist priest’s guts.”

Theroux points to the advantages of being a novelist, as opposed to a historian or a biographer. When faced with gaps in the historical record, he let his imagination work wonders. “Orwell’s biographers speculate that he visited prostitutes, while in Burma,” says Theroux. “Well of course he did! He was a 19-year-old away from home with freedom, power, and money.”

Women weren’t the only things on Blair’s mind at this time. In Burma Sahib, Blair is faced with an ongoing battle for self-development. He has ambitions to write, but his day job prevents him from doing so. Theroux describes Blair during this period as divided, with two personalities.

“There was Blair the committed colonialist and policeman, who was arresting people, supervising hangings, and whippings,” he says. “And then the man within, a sensitive person, objecting to everything that he is doing – this second character is the beginnings of the writer who would later become George Orwell.”

George Orwell was born Eric Blair.

In the postscript of Burma Sahib Theroux provides the reader with a brief explanation of how that second character (with a strong moral conscience) evolved and matured. Blair’s return journey from Burma was a turning point. In the summer of 1927, he returned to England, via Marseille and Paris. That September, back in Cornwall, Blair told his parents he was resigning from the Indian Imperial Police.

Blair adopted the pen name Orwell upon the publication of his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933). It recalls his time living in near-extreme poverty and destitution in both cities.

“In Burma Orwell had money, a uniform, power, and authority,” says Theroux. “But when he came home to England, he took a vow of poverty – he never owned a house or a car, and he was poorly paid until the end of his life, when he published Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Orwell died from tuberculosis, aged 46, in 1950.

“Orwell is almost like this St Paul character,” says Theroux. “But his conversion was becoming anti-colonial after serving five years in the colonial service.”

In one passage from Burma Sahib, the author describes colonial officers boasting about using violence against the local population in the name of “king and country”. Today, Theroux says the “legacy of violence from the British Empire still lingers” across many parts of Asia, in countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Myanmar.

Theroux lived in Singapore for three years. He was shocked by the hangings and the floggings that took place when he was there, which the British introduced to the country. “Orwell was keenly aware that he had participated in violent injustices while living and working in Burma,” says Theroux. “He felt deeply ashamed and felt he had to atone for his actions.”

Like Orwell, Theroux used travel to seek out stories for his own fiction. He was born in 1941 in Medford, Massachusetts into a lower middle-class family with six siblings. In 1963, aged 22, Theroux went to Nyasaland, Africa, where he got a job as a teacher.

“I witnessed British colonialism first hand in Nyasaland, this was shortly before it became the independent republic of Malawi,” says Theroux. “The colonial British clubs there didn’t allow Africans to be members. I was shocked. The civil rights movement started in 1963 in the United States, and I was very alert to the idea of segregation.”

In early novels, such as Jungle Lovers (1971) and Saint Jack (1973) Theroux fictionalised his own experience living as an adventurous expat. Those books sold poorly, though. By the mid-1970s Theroux found himself living in south-east London. “It was the lowest point in my life,” he remembers. Broke and with a family to feed (including son Louis, who went on to become an author and documentary maker), Theroux had an idea to boost his income: taking an epic train journey across the globe and writing a travel book about the experience. With only a small duffle bag, he took the boat-train to Paris.

“From Paris I went to Istanbul, Turkey, and then onto Tehran, Iran, and towards the Afghan border,” Theroux remembers. “I took some buses and then more trains in Pakistan, India and Burma, eventually ending up in Japan.” Theroux returned to England via the Soviet Union, taking the Trans-Siberian express back to Moscow. From there he made his way to Berlin, and eventually back to London.

The trip took four months. The American writer says he had post-traumatic stress disorder when he got home. Crucially, though, his daring plan worked. The Great Railway Bazaar (1975) sold 1.5 million copies, and in 2015 Theroux was awarded a Royal Medal from the Royal Geographical Society for “the encouragement of geographical discovery through travel writing”.

“You find out about different sides to your character when you travel,” Theroux concludes. “You can become a different person because you become liberated when you are alone and far away from home.”

Burma Sahib is published by Hamish Hamilton at $34.99.

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