Una prueba de que leer a Orwell es hoy más necesario que nunca
Esta antología anfibia de ensayos demuestra que no hubo un tema que no tratara George Orwell con acierto, claridad y valentía.
Revela una de sus facetas menos conocidas, la de crítico literario. Sus entrañables memorias como asistente de librería de lance conviven con sus irónicas reflexiones sobre la inflación novelística que padece la industria editorial, una discusión que, como suele pasar con Orwell, bien podría tenerse en nuestros días.
Incluye algunos de sus más célebres textos políticos, como el ensayo sobre el amor británico por la autonomía individual y la propiedad privada.
Eric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to all totalitarianism (both fascism and stalinism), and support of democratic socialism.
Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.
Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Room 101", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "doublethink", and "thoughtcrime". In 2008, The Times named Orwell the second-greatest British writer since 1945.