Author: John Sutherland Publisher: Reaktion Books ISBN: 1780236964 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
In 2012 writer John Sutherland permanently lost his sense of smell. At about the same time, he embarked on a rereading of George Orwell and—still coping with his recent disability—noticed something peculiar: Orwell was positively obsessed with smell. In this original, irreverent biography, Sutherland offers a fresh account of Orwell’s life and works, one that sniffs out a unique, scented trail that wends from Burmese Days through Nineteen Eighty-Four and on to The Road to Wigan Pier. Sutherland airs out the odors, fetors, stenches, and reeks trapped in the pages of Orwell’s books. From Winston Smith’s apartment in Nineteen Eighty-Four, which “smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats,” to the tantalizing aromas of concubine Ma Hla May’s hair in Burmese Days, with its “mingled scent of sandalwood, garlic, coconut oil, and jasmine,” Sutherland explores the scent narratives that abound in Orwell’s literary world. Along the way, he elucidates questions that have remained unanswered in previous biographies, addressing gaps that have kept the writer elusively from us. In doing so, Sutherland offers an entertaining but enriching look at one of the most important writers of the twentieth century and, moreover, an entirely new and sensuous way to approach literature: nose first.
Author: Dorian Lynskey Publisher: Anchor ISBN: 0385544065 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 386
Book Description
"Rich and compelling. . .Lynskey’s account of the reach of 1984 is revelatory.” --George Packer, The Atlantic An authoritative, wide-ranging, and incredibly timely history of 1984--its literary sources, its composition by Orwell, its deep and lasting effect on the Cold War, and its vast influence throughout world culture at every level, from high to pop. 1984 isn't just a novel; it's a key to understanding the modern world. George Orwell's final work is a treasure chest of ideas and memes--Big Brother, the Thought Police, Doublethink, Newspeak, 2+2=5--that gain potency with every year. Particularly in 2016, when the election of Donald Trump made it a bestseller ("Ministry of Alternative Facts," anyone?). Its influence has morphed endlessly into novels (The Handmaid's Tale), films (Brazil), television shows (V for Vendetta), rock albums (Diamond Dogs), commercials (Apple), even reality TV (Big Brother). The Ministry of Truth is the first book that fully examines the epochal and cultural event that is 1984 in all its aspects: its roots in the utopian and dystopian literature that preceded it; the personal experiences in wartime Great Britain that Orwell drew on as he struggled to finish his masterpiece in his dying days; and the political and cultural phenomena that the novel ignited at once upon publication and that far from subsiding, have only grown over the decades. It explains how fiction history informs fiction and how fiction explains history.
Author: Rebecca Solnit Publisher: Granta Books ISBN: 1783785535 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Roses, pleasure and politics: a fresh take on Orwell as an avid gardener, whose political writing was grounded in his passion for the natural world. 'I loved this book... An exhilarating romp through Orwell's life and times' Margaret Atwood 'Expansive and thought-provoking' Independent Outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening - George Orwell Inspired by her encounter with the surviving roses that Orwell is said to have planted in his cottage in Hertfordshire, Rebecca Solnit explores how his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and the intertwined politics of nature and power. Following his journey from the coal mines of England to taking up arms in the Spanish Civil War; from his prescient critique of Stalin to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism, Solnit finds a more hopeful Orwell, whose love of nature pulses through his work and actions. And in her dialogue with the author, she makes fascinating forays into colonial legacies in the flower garden, discovers photographer Tina Modotti's roses, reveals Stalin's obsession with growing lemons in impossibly cold conditions, and exposes the brutal rose industry in Colombia. A fresh reading of a towering figure of the 20th century which finds solace and solutions for the political and environmental challenges we face today, Orwell's Roses is a remarkable reflection on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of resistance. 'Luminous...It is efflorescent, a study that seeds and blooms, propagates thoughts, and tends to historical associations' New Statesman 'A genuinely extraordinary mind, whose curiosity, intelligence and willingness to learn seem unbounded' Irish Times
Author: George Orwell Publisher: ISBN: 0198848420 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 321
Book Description
A Clergyman's Daughter is George Orwell's least well-known, most unappreciated novel. Drawing on his experiences as a hop-picker, teacher, and urban vagrant, it tells the peculiar story of Dorothy Hare, the daughter of the Rector of St Athelstan's in the fictional town of Knype Hill. Unacknowledged by her absent-minded father and gossiped about by his rheumatic parishioners, Dorothy is suddenly and traumatically catapulted into the unknown. She wakes up in London, her memory temporarily gone; travels to the Kentish countryside; spends a night in Trafalgar Square; works for the authoritarian schoolteacher Mrs Creevy; and then journeys back to her old, limited life. A novel about loss and return, A Clergyman's Daughter charts the course of a young woman's voyage out and circular homecoming. In his introduction to the novel, Nathan Waddell lays out the fantastical elements and socio-political dimensions of A Clergyman's Daughter and examines how it drew inspiration from James Joyce's epic modernist novel Ulysses, a book Orwell deeply admired.
Author: Ruben Quintero Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 1405171995 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 624
Book Description
This collection of twenty-nine original essays, surveys satire fromits emergence in Western literature to the present. Tracks satire from its first appearances in the prophetic booksof the Old Testament through the Renaissance and the Englishtradition in satire to Michael Moore’s satirical movieFahrenheit 9/11. Highlights the important influence of the Bible in the literaryand cultural development of Western satire. Focused mainly on major classical and European influences onand works of English satire, but also explores the complex andfertile cultural cross-semination within the tradition of literarysatire.
Author: David Hopkins Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 100090508X Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 300
Book Description
This interdisciplinary collection of essays brings together scholars in the fields of art history, theatre, visual culture, and literature to explore intersections between the European avant-garde (c. 1880–1945) and themes of health and hygiene, such as illness, contagion, cleanliness, and contamination. Examining the artistic oeuvres of some of the canonical names of modern art – including Edgar Degas, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, George Orwell, Marcel Duchamp, and Antonin Artaud – this book investigates instances where the heightened political, social, and cultural currencies embedded within issues of hygiene and contagion have been mobilised, and subversively exploited, to fuel the critical strategy at play. This edited volume promotes an interdisciplinary and socio-historically contextualised understanding of the criticality of the avant-garde gesture and cultivates scholarship that moves beyond the limits of traditional academic subjects to produce innovative and thought-provoking connections and interrelations across various fields. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, literature, theatre, cultural studies, modern history, medical humanities, and visual culture.
Author: James W. Hamilton Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 0429915675 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 364
Book Description
In this volume an inquiry into the nature of the creative process is attempted by paying close attention to the lives of various artists, poets, novelists and playwrights, and selected works of each in order to demonstrate an essential relationship between the two, and that it is most difficult to delineate the nuances of the creative act by treating them as separate entitites. Emphasis is placed upon the effect of early trauma, such as object loss and various forms of deprivation, as a powerful unconscious motivating factor and upon the dream and transitional object as facilitators of the creative effort.
Author: Christopher Hitchens Publisher: Basic Books ISBN: 0786725893 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 120
Book Description
"Hitchens presents a George Orwell fit for the twenty-first century." --Boston Globe In this widely acclaimed biographical essay, the masterful polemicist Christopher Hitchens assesses the life, the achievements, and the myth of the great political writer and participant George Orwell. True to his contrarian style, Hitchens is both admiring and aggressive, sympathetic yet critical, taking true measure of his subject as hero and problem. Answering both the detractors and the false claimants, Hitchens tears down the façade of sainthood erected by the hagiographers and rebuts the critics point by point. He examines Orwell and his perspectives on fascism, empire, feminism, and Englishness, as well as his outlook on America, a country and culture toward which he exhibited much ambivalence. Whether thinking about empires or dictators, race or class, nationalism or popular culture, Orwell's moral outlook remains indispensable in a world that has undergone vast changes in the seven decades since his death. Combining the best of Hitchens' polemical punch and intellectual elegance in a tightly woven and subtle argument, this book addresses not only why Orwell matters today, but how he will continue to matter in a future, uncertain world.
Author: Alan Brown Publisher: Heinemann-Raintree Library ISBN: 9781403482037 Category : Juvenile Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 64
Book Description
How is this novel an analysis of the abuse of political power? What famous poet turned down the chance to publish this novel? What events in George Orwell's life were the inspiration for this novel? Discover how fighting in the Spanish Civil War inspired Orwell to write against totalitarianism.
Author: John Sutherland
Author: Dorian Lynskey
Author: George Orwell
Author: Rebecca Solnit
Author: George Orwell
Author: Ruben Quintero
Author: David Hopkins
Author: James W. Hamilton
Author: Christopher Hitchens
Author: Alan Brown