The following citations are exerts from one of the prefaces of the book animal farm, written

by Geroge Orwell (free translation)

“I was born in India in 1903. My father worked for the english colonial administration, and my
family was one of those ordinary middle class families, formed by soldiers, public
employees, teachers, lawyers, doctors and etc. I studied in England and short after my
graduation, I went to Burma, and enlisted in the Indian Impirial Police. There, I served for 5
years. I didn’t like it, what made me hate imperialism. Between 1928 and 1929, I lived in
Paris, writing short stories and novels no one would publish. I couldn’t make ends meet and
and starved in several occasions.”

(this is where he started to have contact with very poor people, criminals, who lived in the
worst parts of the poorest neighborhoods. Their way of living interested George because of
what it represented, and that’s when he started his social studies.)
His family went through all sorts of hardships, like persecution and imprisonment.