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Emma Larkin is our guest blogger during the week of October 15th. She wil be blogging about her recent trip to Burma (also known as Myanmar). If you have any questions for Emma Larkin, add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some information about Finding George Orwell in Burma:

Over the years the American writer Emma Larkin has spent traveling in Burma, she's come to know all too well the many ways this brutal police state can be described as "Orwellian." The life of the mind exists in a state of siege in Burma, and it long has. But Burma's connection to George Orwell is not merely metaphorical; it is much deeper and more real. Orwell's mother was born in Burma, at the height of the British raj, and Orwell was fundamentally shaped by his experiences in Burma as a young man working for the British Imperial Police. When Orwell died, the novel-in-progress on his desk was set in Burma. It is the place George Orwell's work holds in Burma today, however, that most struck Emma Larkin. She was frequently told by Burmese acquaintances that Orwell did not write one book about their country - his first novel, Burmese Days - but in fact he wrote three, the "trilogy" that included Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. When Larkin quietly asked one Burmese intellectual if he knew the work of George Orwell, he stared blankly for a moment and then said, "Ah, you mean the prophet!"

Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today by the Nobel Prize committee. "He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted," said Ole Danbolt Mjos, chairman of the Nobel committee.

Al Gore's campaign to make the issue of global warming a
recognized problem worldwide was covered in the 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which was also released in book form by Viking earlier this year.

In a statement, Gore said he was "deeply honored," adding that "the climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

The former vice president has stated that he will donate his half of the $1.5 million prize to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a U.S. organization he founded that seeks to persuade people to cut emissions and reduce global warming.

The award ceremony will be held on December 10th, in Oslo, Norway.

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