Burmese Days is a novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by British

British people

The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...

 writer George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

. It was first published in the USA in 1934. It is a tale from the time of the waning days of British colonialism, when Burma was ruled as part of the Indian empire - " a portrait of the dark side of the British Raj

British Raj

British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...

." At its centre is John Flory, " the lone and lacking individual trapped within a bigger system that is undermining the better side of human nature." Orwell's first novel, it describes "corruption and imperial bigotry in a society where, "after all, natives were natives - interesting, no doubt, but finally...an inferior people."

Because of concerns that the novel might be potentially libellous, Katha described too realistically, and that some of the characters might be based on real people, it was first published "further afield", in the United States.