On the understanding that Orwell could demonstrate that he had not named real people, Gollancz finally accepted it for publication the following June. However, it was accepted by Harpers for publication in the United States, where it was finally published in October 1934. Orwell offered the book to Jonathan Cape and Heinemann too, but they turned it down for the same reason. It was feared that the characters bore too great a similarity to people he met whilst stationed there, and Gollancz was not prepared to take the risk. In fact, the European Club, the jail and the police station are still in existence today, and, if you needed any further clues, the map that Orwell reprints at the beginning of the book makes it all too clear that Kyauktada is indeed Katha. It was clear that Orwell’s fictional location for his story – Kyauktada – was in fact the real town of Katha, where Orwell had served in the Police Force. However, it was rejected by Gollancz, who had published Down and Out in Paris and London the previous year, due to their fears of libel. He wrote the first draft while living in Paris in the late 1920s then revised it in 1932, with its final version fully written by early 1934. Burmese Days was the first full-length novel that Orwell wrote, using observations he made during his years with the Indian Police Service in Burma.
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