num_pages: 211
description: In this widely acclaimed biographical essay, Christopher Hitchens assesses the life, the achievements, and the myth of the great political writer and participant George Orwell. In true emulative and contrarian style, Hitchens is both admiring and aggressive, sympathetic yet critical, taking true measure of his subject as hero and problem. Answering both the detractors and the false claimants, Hitchens tears down the façade of sainthood erected by the hagiographers and rebuts the critics point by point. He examines Orwell and his perspectives on fascism, empire, feminism, and Englishness, as well as his outlook on America, a country and culture towards which he exhibited much ambivalence. Whether thinking about empires or dictators, race or class, nationalism or popular culture, Orwell's moral outlook remains indispensable in a world that has undergone vast changes in the fifty years since his death. Combining the best of Hitchens's polemical punch and intellectual elegance in a tightly woven and subtle argument, this book addresses not only why Orwell matters today, but how he will continue to matter in a future, uncertain world. Christopher Hitchens, one of the most incisive minds of our own age, meets Orwell on the page in this provocative encounter of wit, contention and moral truth.
language: English
title: Why Orwell Matters
titlecomplete: Why Orwell Matters
characters: Theodor W. Adorno, Claud Cockburn, James Burnham, Vladimir Lenin, E.P. Thompson, Salman Rushdie, Philip Larkin, Adam Michnik, W.H. Auden, George Gissing, Christopher Hitchens, Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Winston Smith, John Flory, Isaac Deutscher, Robert Conquest, Robert Mugabe, Raymond Williams, Andreu Nin i Pérez, Peter Hitchens, Gordon Comstock, George Orwell
genres: Essays, Politics, Philosophy, Biography, Literature, Criticism, Nonfiction, History, Literary Criticism, Biography Memoir
ratings_count: 3928
publisher: Basic Books