Paul Theroux’s 30th novel, about George Orwell’s years as a policeman in Burma, is part of a well-populated genre: Tan Twan Eng on Somerset Maugham in Malaysia, Colm Tóibín on Thomas Mann in America, Damon Galgut on EM Forster in India. Burma Sahib also joins the many books published last year to mark the 120th anniversary of Orwell’s birth, of which the ones that have provoked the most attention are DJ Taylor’s Orwell: The New Life and Anna Funder’s Wifedom, the latter a decidedly unsympathetic