George Orwell · 1934 · exile

Orwell's first novel, written straight out of five years in the Imperial Police and published in America first because it was thought libellous at home. A timber merchant in a district town on the Irrawaddy proposes his Indian friend for the European Club, and the club decides otherwise.

1. 1
   Paris

   Elizabeth Lackersteen's bohemian upbringing and her mother's death of ptomaine poisoning - after which an aunt in Burma sends for her, on the understanding that a girl with no money must find a husband.

2. 2
   Rangoon

   The capital of British Burma and the point of arrival - the world of clubs and cantonments that Orwell spent five years inside as an Imperial Police officer, and could not stop writing about afterwards.

3. 3
   Mandalay

   North to the last royal capital and the railhead - and then the branch line onward, a full day's journey, to a district town most Europeans would never willingly be posted to.

4. 4
   Kyauktada

   Katha on the Irrawaddy, thinly renamed. The European Club with its four sahibs and its argument about admitting a native member is the whole novel - Orwell drew his publisher a sketch-map of the real town.

5. 5
   The jungle camp

   Flory's teak camp out in the forest, where he is at his best and least ridiculous - and where he takes Elizabeth, who is impressed by the shooting and appalled by everything else about the country.

6. 6
   Kyauktada

   Back to the club, the scandal U Po Kyin has arranged, and the church - the ending Orwell wrote at twenty-eight about the life he had walked away from, and which cost him almost nothing to be honest about.