”Homage to Catalonia is a triumph…Frederick Davidson makes a fine reader. He sounds convincingly as Orwell might have sounded, even to the occasional use of French-accented Spanish pronunciation…Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.” AudioFile
In 1936, George Orwell went to Spain to report on the civil war and instead joined the POUM militia to fight against the Fascists.
In this now justly famous account of his experience, he describes both the bleak and the comic aspects of trench warfare on the Aragon front, the Barcelona uprising in May 1937, his nearly fatal wounding just two weeks later, and his escape from Barcelona into France after the Party of Maxist Unification (POUM) was suppressed.
As important as the story of the war itself is Orwell’s analysis of why the Communist Party sabotaged the workers’ revolution and branded the POUM as Trotskyist, which provides an essential key to understanding the outcome of the war and an ironic sidelight on international Communism.
It was during this period in Spain that Orwell learned for himself the nature of totalitarianism in practice, an education that laid the groundwork for his great books Animal Farm and 1984.
”Homage to Catalonia is a triumph…Frederick Davidson makes a fine reader. He sounds convincingly as Orwell might have sounded, even to the occasional use of French-accented Spanish pronunciation…Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.” AudioFile
“One of Orwell’s very best books and perhaps the best book that exists on the Spanish Civil War.” New Yorker
“For a firsthand account of the Spanish Civil War, turn to George Orwell’s memoir about his six months serving on the militia…That he could have written so objective a book so soon after his almost fatal involvement in the war itself and in the partisan conflict seems miraculous.” New York Times
“Clear-eyed and unflinching…At once history and a moral and imaginative experience.” New York Herald Tribune Book Review
“Homage to Catalonia reminds us that Orwell was a superb journalist and reporter. Nobody has described the experience of this kind of warfare of 1914-1918, better than it is done here.” Julian Symons, poet, historian, and crime novelist
Language | English |
---|---|
Release Day | Dec 31, 1991 |
Release Date | January 1, 1992 |
Release Date Machine | 694224000 |
Imprint | Blackstone Publishing |
Provider | Blackstone Publishing |
Categories | History, Europe, Nonfiction - Adult, Nonfiction - All |
Overview
In 1936, George Orwell went to Spain to report on the civil war and instead joined the POUM militia to fight against the Fascists.
In this now justly famous account of his experience, he describes both the bleak and the comic aspects of trench warfare on the Aragon front, the Barcelona uprising in May 1937, his nearly fatal wounding just two weeks later, and his escape from Barcelona into France after the Party of Maxist Unification (POUM) was suppressed.
As important as the story of the war itself is Orwell’s analysis of why the Communist Party sabotaged the workers’ revolution and branded the POUM as Trotskyist, which provides an essential key to understanding the outcome of the war and an ironic sidelight on international Communism.
It was during this period in Spain that Orwell learned for himself the nature of totalitarianism in practice, an education that laid the groundwork for his great books Animal Farm and 1984.