Overview

A wonderful selection of Orwell's finest narrative essays. George Orwell was first and foremost an essayist. From his earliest published article in 1928 to his untimely death in 1950, he produced an extraordinary array of short non-fiction that reflected - and illuminated - the fraught times in which he lived and wrote. 'As soon as he began to write something,' comments George Packer in his foreword to this new two-volume collection, 'it was as natural for Orwell to propose, generalize, qualify, argue, judge - in short, to think - as it was for Yeats to versify or Dickens to invent.' This collection charts Orwell's development as a master of the narrative-essay form and unites classics such as 'Shooting an Elephant' with lesser-known journalism and passages from his wartime diary. Whether detailing the horrors of Orwell's boyhood in an English boarding school or bringing to life the sights, sounds, and smells of the Spanish Civil War, these narrative essays weave together the personal and the political in an unmistakable style that is at once plain-spoken and brilliantly complex.

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9781846553271

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Orwell continues to be the benchmark for all would-be essayists because he achieved a perfect balance of clarity of prose and originality of insight. Consequently, he's marvellously readable, an effect he achieved without sacrificing a scrap of his fierce, wintry intelligence. There can be few writers who are as delightful discussing the class system as they are the common toad; Orwell was one of them -- Colin Waters Sunday Herald The fast track to a core of truth that Orwell's essays take on every page can still make your hair stand on end... With an equally well-chosen (by George Packer) companion volume of Critical Essays, it delivers to newcomers and aficionados a crash course in the arts of close observing, free thinking - and crystalline writing -- Boyd Tonkin Independent Best known for novels 1984 and Animal Farm, Orwell was also a superb essayist, and these two fine collections display his breadth of topic and depth of skill... Unpretentious, intelligent, compassionate and brilliantly insightful -- Doug Johnstone Big Issue Orwell's sanity and humanity seem especially precious today, when such qualities are in such short supply. How one would love to read him on the subject of our present political pygmies Daily Telegraph

Orwell continues to be the benchmark for all would-be essayists because he achieved a perfect balance of clarity of prose and originality of insight. Consequently, he's marvellously readable, an effect he achieved without sacrificing a scrap of his fierce, wintry intelligence. There can be few writers who are as delightful discussing the class system as they are the common toad; Orwell was one of them -- Colin Waters * Sunday Herald * The fast track to a core of truth that Orwell's essays take on every page can still make your hair stand on end... With an equally well-chosen (by George Packer) companion volume of Critical Essays, it delivers to newcomers and aficionados a crash course in the arts of close observing, free thinking - and crystalline writing -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent * Best known for novels 1984 and Animal Farm, Orwell was also a superb essayist, and these two fine collections display his breadth of topic and depth of skill... Unpretentious, intelligent, compassionate and brilliantly insightful -- Doug Johnstone * Big Issue * Orwell's sanity and humanity seem especially precious today, when such qualities are in such short supply. How one would love to read him on the subject of our present political pygmies * Daily Telegraph *

Author Information

George Orwell (Author) George Orwell (1903-1950) is one of England's most famous writers and social commentators. He is the author of the classic political satire Animal Farm and the dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is also well known for his essays and journalism, particularly his works covering his travels and his time fighting in the Spanish Civil War. His writing is celebrated for its piercing clarity, purpose and wit and his books continue to be bestsellers all over the world. George Packer (Introducer) George Packer is a staff writer for the Atlantic and a former staff writer for the New Yorker. He is the author of The Unwinding- Thirty Years of American Decline, which was a New York Times bestseller and won a National Book Award. His other nonfiction books include The Assassins' Gate- America in Iraq, Blood of the Liberals, which won the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and Our Man- Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, which won the Los Angeles Times Biography Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. He has also written two novels, The Half Man and Central Square. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, Harper's, and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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