Articles
Confessions of (Another) Book Reviewer
(Lev Grossman writes about books here on Wednesdays. Subscribe to his RSS feed.) My career as a book reviewer started with a cold call. The year before, I had...
Libya: What We Talk About When We (Don't) Talk About 'War'
In the aftermath of World War II, George Orwell reflected on politics, power and language: "When the general atmosphere is bad," he wrote, "language must...
China's Orwell
In 2005, Penguin paid $100,000 for the English-language rights to Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem, a coming-of-age tale set in Inner Mongolia. It was a record sum for...
Should George Orwell Blog?
"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle," noted George Orwell in a weekly newspaper column in 1946. To help him keep focused, the author...
Don't Call That Dentist, Hand Me the Pliers
"A nation of people with bad teeth" was how George Orwell caricatured the United Kingdom in 1940. Nor was he unique in poking fun at the fruits of British...
Orwell Up Close
Is there a college student alive who hasn't heard of George Orwell? Or his prescient novels Animal Farm and 1984 — at least in their Hollywood versions? Or any...
Firm Warfare
On the 100th anniversary of the birth of Eric Blair, known to posterity as George Orwell, it seems appropriate to ask whether he got it wrong. In 1984 Orwell was...
Television: Whitewashing the Farm
More than 50 years ago, George Orwell wrote a simple beast fable about a revolution devolving from idealism ("All animals are equal") to oppression ("...but some...
Return of the Luddites
The mere words socialism and communism," wrote George Orwell 62 years ago, "draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist,...
