Homage to Catalonia @ richardeward.com

Homage to Catalonia
by George Orwell
from Harvest Books

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

• Orwell the Objective!
  My mother spent a frightful childhood in revolutionary Barcelona near the cathedral "Sagrada Famila"...FAI(anarchist)territory. Orwell's account is extremely close to what my mother recounts.
  She told me about the compulsory closed fist salute she had to give as a young child in front of the local church (turned FAI party headquarters). The buildings in her neighborhood bedecked with the red and black colors of the anarchists,and her frightened crawling across the kitchen floor as bullets flew between... more info

• Orwell re-visited
  Homage to Catalonia is Orwell at the zenith of his journalistic style--brutally candid in its description of the battlefield and the politics of the Spanish Civil War in which he participated as a volunteer foot soldier against the military insurgency. The Civil War was, of course, a prelude to WWII and while this is clearly adumbrated in Orwell's vivd descriptions of the antagonists, he could not have anticipated the future conflagration. It is a "must read" not only for those interested in the politics of... more info

• A Supplement and an Obituary
  "Homage to Catalonia" has long passed from the shelf for current events to the shelf of primary historical sources. No one can study the Spanish Civil War without encountering it. On that basis, it's a five-star book; all primary sources should get five stars. As a reading experience, it's not without weaknesses, which the earlier review by H. Schneider examines cogently. I refer you to that review.
  Today's newspapers (7-11-08) carried extended obituaries for David Smith, who died in Berkeley, CA, at... more info

• Homage, Take 2: what about Aragon?
  After re-reading Catalonia, some 20 years after my first encounter, I am disappointed. I do not think that this is Orwell's best work. It has many of his strengths, mainly the elegant, efficient and straightforward prose that he developed so impressively, but there are some flaws. Main flaw in my view is the fact that the main political theme has become dead and irrelevant. Stalin died some decades ago, the Soviet Empire collapsed, we don't need to dig in the little details of their abominable strategies... more info

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