This volume contains the novels of perhaps the greatest British writer of the twentieth century, including two of the prophetically chilling works of the twentieth century‑‑Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.Orwell was, in Henry James's phrase, "one of those on whom nothing was lost," and "perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture," The Economist. Orwell clear-sightedly looks at humanity and, in these six highly original novels, shows us what could go terribly wrong.
George Orwell's early novels illuminate both his masterpieces, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four and George Orwell himself.
After serving six years in the Imperial Police in Burma, Orwell was disgusted by imperialism Burmese Days, based on these years, is the story of a sensitive lonely Englishman in Burma. It is also "a crisp, fierce, and almost boisterous attack on the Anglo-Indian" (New Statesman).
"The great fascination of A Clergyman's Daughter is that it is essentially the same plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four ... It's about somebody who is spied upon, and eavesdropped upon, and oppressed by vast exterior forces ... It's a very prophetic novel." (D. J. Taylor, Orwell's biographer)
The Aspidistra is a plant that never thrives, but tenaciously survives on British windowsills. It is a metaphor for the life of the British lower-middle class. Keep the Apsidistra Flying is a pointed observation of the British class system which is based on the worship of the Money God:
And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money. ... Don't you see that a man's whole personality is bound up with his income? His personality is his income. (Orwell, Keep the Apsidistra Flying).
Coming up for Air is remarkably prescient. It foresees the scourges of poverty and totalitarianism, and, decades before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the destruction of the environment.
Orwell wrote Animal Farm in three months in the winter of 1943-4. It was only published in August 1945 because it was seen for what it was: a critique of Stalin's Soviet Union, which, much to Orwell's disgust, was a strategic ally of the United Kingdom.
In his compelling dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, GeorgeOrwell created the world of Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, 2 + 2 = 5, and the memory hole: indeed, a complete "Orwellian" society. In the twenty-first century, in a world of fake news and ubiquitous state and corporate monitoring of citizens, with vast regions under totalitarianism, Nineteen Eighty-Four is even more relevant than when it was written. It is essential reading.
This reasonably-priced volume will be a pleasure to anyone with an interest in Orwell.
George Orwell (1903-1950)was a leading British writer of the twentieth century. He studied at Wellington College and Eton (1917-1921) where he was a King's Scholar. He followed family tradition and joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, until 1927 when, disgusted by imperialism, he resigned to pursue his boyhood dream of being a writer. Orwell, a prolific journalist, essayist, novelist and nonfiction writer, is remembered for his prescient writing and his commitment to truth and clarity of expression. His novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four place him at the pinnacle of British literature.
