title: 20th Century Burmese Days (Twentieth Century Classics)
author:  George Orwell 
description: George Orwell, written in 1934, based on his experiences while serving with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma.
zlib_text: PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS
  
  
  ##### Shooting an Elephant
  
  
  George Orwell (whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair) was born in 1903 in
  India and then went to Eton when his family moved
  
  
  back to England. From 1922 to 1927 he served with the Indian Imperial Police
  in Burma, an experience that inspired his first
  
  
  novel, _Burmese Days_ (1934). He lived in Paris before returning to England,
  and _Down and Out in Paris and London_ was published in 1936. After writing
  _The Road to Wigan Pier_ and _Homage to Catalonia_ (his account of fighting
  for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War), Orwell was admitted to a
  sanatorium in 1938 and from
  
  
  then on was never fully fit. He spent six months in Morocco where he wrote
  _Coming Up for Air_. During the Second World War Orwell served in the Home
  Guard and worked for the BBC. His political allegory _Animal Farm_ was
  published in 1945 and it was this novel, together with _Nineteen Eighty-Four_
  (1949), which brought him worldwide fame. George Orwell was ta