Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative EssaysEssays by the author of 1984 on topics from “remembrances of working in a bookshop [to] recollections of fighting in the Spanish Civil War” (Publishers Weekly). George Orwell was first and foremost an essayist, producing throughout his life an extraordinary array of short nonfiction that reflected—and illuminated—the fraught times in which he lived. “As soon as he began to write something,” comments George Packer in his foreword, “it was as natural for Orwell to propose, generalize, qualify, argue, judge—in short, to think—as it was for Yeats to versify or Dickens to invent.” Facing Unpleasant Facts charts Orwell’s development as a master of the narrative-essay form and unites such classics as “Shooting an Elephant” with lesser-known journalism and passages from his wartime diary. Whether detailing the horrors of Orwell’s 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. “Best known for his late-career classics Animal Farm and 1984, George Orwell—who used his given name, Eric Blair, in the earliest pieces of this collection aimed at the aficionado as well as the general reader—was 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.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review |
From inside the book
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... this apparently trivial detail, the narrator says: "It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man." In a sense, the whole of Orwell's nonfiction is contained.
... this apparently trivial detail, the narrator says: "It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man." In a sense, the whole of Orwell's nonfiction is contained.
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Narrative Essays George Orwell George Packer. In a sense, the whole of Orwell's nonfiction is contained in "that moment" and the paragraph that follows. This move recurs in essays throughout this volume, and it always signals, in ...
Narrative Essays George Orwell George Packer. In a sense, the whole of Orwell's nonfiction is contained in "that moment" and the paragraph that follows. This move recurs in essays throughout this volume, and it always signals, in ...
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... whole, even as the world picture grows ever darker, he becomes a lonely widower, and his health declines, there is more pleasure taken in these pieces—in nature, in common rituals, solid objects, bits of trivia, and old cultural ...
... whole, even as the world picture grows ever darker, he becomes a lonely widower, and his health declines, there is more pleasure taken in these pieces—in nature, in common rituals, solid objects, bits of trivia, and old cultural ...
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... whole much more smartly dressed than one would expect. They were strolling up and down with their hats on, shivering with the cold. I saw here a thing which interested me greatly. When I was being taken to my cell I had seen two dirty ...
... whole much more smartly dressed than one would expect. They were strolling up and down with their hats on, shivering with the cold. I saw here a thing which interested me greatly. When I was being taken to my cell I had seen two dirty ...
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... whole body, wild with glee at finding so many human beings together. It was a large woolly dog, half Airedale, half pariah. For a moment it pranced round us, and then, before anyone could stop it, it had made a dash for the prisoner ...
... whole body, wild with glee at finding so many human beings together. It was a large woolly dog, half Airedale, half pariah. For a moment it pranced round us, and then, before anyone could stop it, it had made a dash for the prisoner ...
Contents
Section 25 | |
Section 26 | |
Section 27 | |
Section 28 | |
Section 29 | |
Section 30 | |
Section 31 | |
Section 32 | |
Section 17 | |
Section 18 | |
Section 19 | |
Section 20 | |
Section 21 | |
Section 22 | |
Section 23 | |
Section 24 | |
Section 33 | |
Section 34 | |
Section 35 | |
Section 36 | |
Section 37 | |
Section 38 | |
Section 39 | |
Section 40 | |
Section 41 | |
Section 42 | |
Section 43 | |
Section 44 | |
Section 45 | |
Section 46 | |
Section 47 | |
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