Fight to Save Orwell’s Burmese Inspiration

Cobwebs cover its furniture and its rooms are long deserted, but a crumbling house in northern Myanmar is at the center of a conservation battle by locals who say it was once home to George Orwell.

The remote trading post of Katha on the banks of the Irrawaddy – and the house lived in by Orwell in the 1920s – were immortalized in the acclaimed British author’s first novel, “Burmese Days”.