Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

A firsthand account of the brutal conditions of the Spanish Civil War.

Homage to Catalonia is Orwell’s personal account of his observations in the Spanish Civil War. The book was first published in the United Kingdom in 1938.

In 1936, originally intending merely to report on the Spanish Civil War as a journalist, George Orwell found himself embroiled as a participant—as a member of the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unity.

Fighting against the Fascists, he described in painfully vivid and occasionally comic detail life in the trenches—with a “democratic army” composed of men with no ranks, no titles, and often no weapons—and his near fatal wounding. As the politics became tangled, Orwell was pulled into a heartbreaking conflict between his own personal ideals and the complicated realities of political power struggles.

Considered one of the finest works by a man V. S. Pritchett called “the wintry conscience of a generation,” Homage to Catalonia is both Orwell’s memoir of his experiences at the front and his tribute to those who died in what he called a fight for common decency. This edition features a new foreword by Adam Hochschild placing the war in greater context and discussing the evolution of Orwell’s views on the Spanish Civil War.

“One of Orwell’s very best books and perhaps the best book that exists on the Spanish Civil War.” — The New Yorker

George Orwell (1903-1950) served with the Imperial Police in Burma, fought with the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, and was a member of the Home Guard and a writer for the BBC during World War II. He is the author of many works of non-fiction and fiction.

Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell
Penguin Classics
2013
256 Pages
£6.99
Paperback
ISBN10 0141393025
ISBN13 9780141393025

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: - Book News, - Book Stories, Archive O-P, Art & Literature News, George Orwell, MUSEUM OF PUBLIC PROTEST, REPRESSION OF WRITERS, JOURNALISTS & ARTISTS, WAR & PEACE