Although this was Orwell's first book and no doubt based in part on his experiences in his first job as a policeman in Burma, his talent is already fully developed, the writing is superb, the characterisations rounded and lively.
Set in the days of the Empire, with the British ruling in Burma, this book describes corruption and imperial bigotry. Several of his neologisms, along with the term "Orwellian" - now a byword for any oppressive or manipulative social phenomenon opposed to a free society - have entered the vernacular.
Orwell's influence on contemporary culture, popular and political, continues decades after his death. His 1938 book Homage to Catalonia, an account of his experiences as a volunteer on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, together with numerous essays on politics, literature, language, and culture, have been widely acclaimed. Orwell is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949) and the satirical novella Animal Farm (1945) - they have together sold more copies than any two books by any other twentieth-century author. He was a prolific polemical journalist, article writer, literary critic, reviewer, poet, and writer of fiction, and, considered perhaps the twentieth century's best chronicler of English culture.
In 1943, he became literary editor of the Tribune, a weekly left-wing magazine. However by then they had escaped from Spain and returned to England.īetween 19, Orwell worked on propaganda for the BBC. Orwell and his wife were accused of "rabid Trotskyism" and tried in absentia in Barcelona, along with other leaders of the POUM, in 1938. Later the organization that he had joined when he joined the Republican cause, The Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), was painted by the pro-Soviet Communists as a Trotskyist organization (Trotsky was Joseph Stalin's enemy) and disbanded.
Orwell was severely wounded when he was shot through his throat. In addition to his literary career Orwell served as a police officer with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma from 1922-1927 and fought with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War from 1936-1937. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language, and a belief in democratic socialism. Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist.
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