In “Burma Sahib,” the renowned novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux imagines the life of young Eric Blair (the future George Orwell) when he was a novice police officer in colonial Burma.At ...

Surprisingly little is known about the four-and-a-half years Eric Blair spent in Burma as a policeman from 1922. There were letters sent to his parents and a sweetheart back home, now lost; and a ...

For one, it is about the man he really was, Eric Blair, and the five years he spent as a policeman in Burma before he adopted his nom de plume and became a published writer.