Published in 1934; set in 1920s Burma, which was a British colony George Orwell (1903-1950) worked as a colonial policeman in Burma from 1922 to 1927. Burmese Days, his first novel, grew out of reflection on his own days as a colonial policeman in Burma during the 1920s. It tells the story of John Flory, a timber merchant, and his troubles relating to the other expats that he has to live and work with It provides a very caustic view of British colonialism at the ground level, where Orwell’s characters (and Orwell himself) must do “the dirty work of empire”.