Emma Larkin

Emma Larkin is the pseudonym Larkin was educated in the UK from the age of ten, at least partly at boarding school, and in 1999 completed a Master's degree in Southeast Asian History from London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, Her thesis, about British censorship in colonial Burma was published in the Journal of Burma Studies in 2003. and began entering the country for the purposes of journalism since around the year 2000, when, from her base in Bangkok, Larkin began researching and reporting on the military dictatorship that ruled the country. She is known for her coverage of Myanmar and George Orwell's experience within it in her debut book, Finding George Orwell in Burma. Speaking to the Democratic Voice of Burma, Larkin stated that she began that book in 2002 and travelled back and forth between Bangkok and Myanmar over the next two or three years. The only way this could be accomplished at the time was by fraudulently using business visas that entitled her to stay in Myanmar for months at a time. As a cover story to hide her journalistic work in the country, she received business visas under the pretext of studying the Burmese language. Despite engaging a tutor and taking great pains to appear legitimate, she reported being followed by undercover police. Her book, which has elements of biography, travelogue, and investigative reporting, argues that Orwell did not only write one book about his time in Burma, but that Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four were based on his experiences as a police officer in colonial Burma. In addition, these two dystopian novels uniquely prophecised what life under the Burmese military dictatorship would be like: from the naming of government departments, to the idea that the government can control the past when the sharing and recording of individual recollections is forbidden. Despite overall positive reviews of the book, it has been criticised as "a nostalgic search for a lost Burma" in which Larkin creates an "ambiguous space... for British colonialism" Audio recordings of her voice confirm that she speaks with an English accent. This strategy had been successful as of 2010. She spoke of the paranoia that affects foreign writers in Myanmar due to the constant surveillance and possibility of being searched at any time. This paranoia led her to destroy written notes or pass them to others who are leaving the country. In the aftermath of the 2014 Thai coup d'etat, Larkin spoke of needing to retain her pseudonym due to domestic political concerns. As of 2022 Larkin was writing a yet-to-be-published second novel, set in Myanmar. Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Tea Shop, 2005. (Also published as Finding George Orwell in Burma). The Self-Conscious Censor: Censorship in Burma under the British, 1900-1939. (Master's thesis, 1999, published in the Journal of Burma Studies, 2003). This book has been taught at university level and has been the subject of academic analysis.

Larkin's first work of fiction published under her pseudonym, Comrade Aeon's Field Guide to Bangkok, continues exploring themes of authoritarianism and censorship, this time with a diverse array of Bangkok residents with converging story arcs related to the 1992 Black May protests and extrajudicial killings by Thai police and armed forces.