Homage to Catalonia Author:George Orwell A National Review Top Ten Best Nonfiction Books of the Century — — ?One of Orwell?s very best books and perhaps the best book that exists on the Spanish Civil War.??The New Yorker — — In 1936, originally intending merely to report on the Spanish Civil War as a journalist, George Orwell found himself embroiled as a participant?as a member of the ... more »Workers? Party of Marxist Unity. Fighting against the Fascists, he described in painfully vivid and occasionally comic detail life in the trenches?with a ?democratic army? composed of men with no ranks, no titles, and often no weapons?and his near fatal wounding. As the politics became tangled, Orwell was pulled into a heartbreaking conflict between his own personal ideals and the complicated realities of political power struggles.
Considered one of the finest works by a man V. S. Pritchett called ?the wintry conscience of a generation,? Homage to Catalonia is both Orwell?s memoir of his experiences at the front and his tribute to those who died in what he called a fight for common decency. This edition features a new foreword by Adam Hochschild placing the war in greater context and discussing the evolution of Orwell?s views on the Spanish Civil War.
?No one except George Orwell . . . made the violence and self-dramatization of Spain so burning and terrible.?? Alfred Kazin, New York Times
?A wise book, one that once read will never be forgotten.??Chicago Sunday Tribune« less