L'Angleterre, votre Angleterre

by George Orwell, Françoise Bouillot (translator)

Un des meilleurs portraits de l’âme "british", de la mentalité anglaise, et de ce pays si déroutant. Orwell était profondément anglais, il aimait sans partage sa patrie, mais il était aussi très lucide sur les faiblesses d’une nation structurée par les inégalités sociales, une presse malhonnête et un système de classe au seul bénéfice de ceux qui sont en haut de l'échelle. À lire parce qu’on aime les Anglais, mais aussi parce que ce texte de 1941 nous parle de la société d’aujourd’hui.

96 pages

Published October 2, 2024

About the author

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.