For my most recent trip to Myanmar, I brought only one book with me, Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin. It didn’t take me long to wonder if I’d smuggled a banned book into the country, because this “travelogue” cuts deep in the heart of Burma’s political oppression, and it pulls no punches. I tried to hide the cover whenever I read it in public!

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Quick Summary of This Unique Biography/Travelogue

Emma Larkin—whom I read before in her post-tsunami book, Everything is Broken (2010)—takes her language skills and investigative spirit on the trail of one of Britain’s literary favorites, George Orwell, who served with the colonial police in in this distant outpost in the 1920s.

Larkin breaks her book down into 5 parts, each focused on Orwell’s different locations of service: Mandalay, The Delta, Rangoon, Moulmein, and Katha. Along with her notes of finding decrepit British architecture and the occasional octogenarian who remembers British rule, Larkin also explores Burma as it is, a nation caught in the grips of strong-arm military control.

The interesting thing about George Orwell and his relationship to Burma is that only one of his books is strictly about this country, Burmese Days (1934) but, as Larking writes:

In Burma there is a joke that Orwell wrote not just one novel about the country, but three: a trilogy comprised of Burmese Days, Animal Farm, and Nineteen Eighty-Four. (3)

Her research seems to bear this out. Even if unintentionally, Orwell captured Burma’s three stages of self-defeat with these three books, and the parallels she draws through her travels and historical discussions are stunning.

A Land of “Invisible Oppression”

The Myanmar of 2026 is not identical to that of 2004, though there are far more similarities politically than differences. From the moment I touched down in Yangon, though, I sent a post to my friends reminding them that “The Level 4 Travel Advisory from the US State Department is only for the nation as a whole, not for Yangon City. I’m not telling you to make this your next travel destination, but also, ‘Fear not.'”

That’s easy for me to say as a tourist, of course, because the Junta want to show a happy face to the world, while still bombing rebel outposts further away. Burmese citizens are still limited in their travels. The conscription laws keep everyone in fear. The recent elections were, to most locals, a joke. This feeling of disconnect for the visitor, though, is not new with me. Even back in 2004, Larkin wrote of the same:

Because of the travel restrictions, tourists can stay in Burma for weeks, and never see any evidence of the regime‘s more brutal tactics… Indeed, everything in Burma does seem normal: people go about their business in the streets, talking, laughing, chewing beetle, reading, going to the movies. As one Burmese friend had chided me, “What did you expect? That we would all be sitting around on the pavement crying?” (46)

That same friend called the feeling a “disturbing phenomenon of invisible oppression” and likened it to friend’s cancer that no one wants to discuss. (46)

The smiles and laughter were, for the most part, absent in my recent experience in the country, and it was thus easy for me to understand what Larkin later writes:

All you had to do, it seemed, was scratch the surface of one of the town’s smiling residence, and you would find bitterness or tears. (60)

Larkin learned the truths of such bitterness and tears through the contacts she made while traveling. With her language skills, she often chatted with locals and broke ice with long-time residents over tea or even book clubs, of which she found several. With this in mind, she writes of a literary undercurrent that’s alive in certain corners, permitting some a mental freedom not enjoyed by most:

In Burma, certain narratives may be forbidden, and many books may be banned, but this doesn’t mean that they don’t circulate. They travel between trusted friends, beneath false covers, from hidden libraries all over the country in form, a parallel universe of alternative truths and secret histories. (63)

Thriving under Oppression

The constant fear in Burma of political trespass and governmental repercussions reminds one of the ever-present Big Brother of 1984 and the “thought crimes” that caused many otherwise normal people to be erased. It’s thus easy to sense why Burma feels as if it’s living through Part III of Orwell’s unintentional trilogy. At one point, one of Larkin’s friends remarks about the constant need to look over his shoulder:

It doesn’t make any difference, whether they have informers or not. It is enough that we believe that their informers are everywhere. After that, we start to do their work for them. (80)

But among her many impromptu interviews, Larkin also hit upon a trend of free-in-the-mind Burmese who’ve found ways to thrive despite the conditions. Throughout the book, they hint at some of their “tricks of the trade”, for example:

• Many Burmese activists know that it is impossible to withstand extreme torture. They can promise their friends only one thing: that they will endure the pain for three days. This, it is hoped, provides others connected to them with enough time to go into hiding. (150)
  
• That’s how you pick up a little snips of information. You ask an innocent question and you get a little bit of knowledge here in a little bit there, and then you add it all up and work out with a situation is. (170)
  
• I operate with the understanding that they always know what I am doing, that they are always watching me… every move I make is a calculated risk. And I make it knowing that I can answer for everything I do. Doing anything in Verma— anything at all—is risky. But that’s the only way to live. You can’t exist within the system without taking risks. (172)

Conclusion

This was a wonderful albeit frightening book for me to read during my recent visit to Myanmar. Things have not changed all that much over the course of two decades. As a case-in-point, even following the earthquake in early 2025, the Junta continued bombing the rebels one day later, just to show them who’s boss. Still, the Burmese people continue to hold out hope that change is coming.

Although Larkin’s book is more than 20 years old, I felt like it still captures the heart of the people—bent but not broken, realistic yet hopeful, and (if I may be so bold as to put a modern spin on things) waiting for the day when President Trump does for them what he’s accomplished in Venezuela.

Write your Congressmen…60 million people will thank you.

©2026 E.T.