The further he travels into the country, the more the line between the abstract and tangible becomes blurred, especially as he bears witness to the often violent unrest which has befallen the region. Thus begins his great journey of exploration and discovery bound to challenge and preconceptions he had about the world and the doings of the British Empire.

After a bit of consideration, Drake decides to leave the safety of his life and comfort of his wife to sail towards an unknown destiny. One day a strange request comes through to him from the War Office: they want him to travel to Burma and service the piano of an army surgeon for three months in exchange for a full year’s worth of pay. The story opens in 1886 as we are presented with Edgar Drake, the titular tuner living a life as normal as can be. For his first published novel, titled The Piano Tuner, Daniel Mason decided to take us on something of a guided tour into one of those colonies: British Burma. Life in those colonies was certainly different from anything they had known either before or after, making them a curious microcosm to explore in our history. The British used to hold countless colonies over multiple continents, and as you might imagine, this led to a considerable amount of strife and opposition over the decades. Great Britain might be relegated to a relatively small piece of land these days, making it easy to forget it wasn’t so long ago they essentially had control over half the world through their empire. Daniel Mason’s Guided Tour of British Burma

The piano tuner by daniel mason