Essays by the author of 1984 on topics from тАЬremembrances of working in a bookshop [to] recollections of fighting in the Spanish Civil WarтАЭ (Publishers Weekly).
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George Orwell was first and foremost an essayist, producing throughout his life an extraordinary array of short nonfiction that reflectedтАФand illuminatedтАФthe fraught times in which he lived. тАЬAs soon as he began to write something,тАЭ comments George Packer in his foreword, тАЬit was as natural for Orwell to propose, generalize, qualify, argue, judgeтАФin short, to thinkтАФas it was for Yeats to versify or Dickens to invent.тАЭ
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Facing Unpleasant Facts charts OrwellтАЩs development as a master of the narrative-essay form and unites such classics as тАЬShooting an ElephantтАЭ with lesser-known journalism and passages from his wartime diary. Whether detailing the horrors of OrwellтАЩs boyhood in an English boarding school or bringing to life the sights, sounds, and smells of the Spanish Civil War, these essays weave together the personal and the political in an unmistakable style that is at once plainspoken and brilliantly complex.
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тАЬBest known for his late-career classics Animal Farm and 1984, George OrwellтАФwho used his given name, Eric Blair, in the earliest pieces of this collection aimed at the aficionado as well as the general readerтАФwas above all a polemicist of the first rank. Organized chronologically, from 1931 through the late 1940s, these in-your-face writings showcase the power of this literary form.тАЭ тАФPublishers Weekly, starred review