Travel to Europe

Homage to Catalonia (Harvest Book)

Format: Paperback
Author: George Orwell
ReleaseDate: 22 October, 1969
Publisher: Harvest Books
Rating:

Free Mind


At this moment, the Government in Spain is trying -in the best Ministry of Truth orwellian tradition- to re-write the recent history. George Orwell (Eric Blair) shows how someone can be an idealist but, at the same time, is able to keep all his observation and reasoning capacity. It should be interesting having this book in spanish for many people lacking the most elemental knowledge about their own history.

It should have been interesting too having the opinion of Orwell himself about his own experience when he wrote "1984" or "Animal Farm". That should have been better than the amount of letters with dubious relation with the object of the book.

In summary, four stars because something is missing in the book and something should not have to be there.

Insightful
I knew about Orwell's participation in the Spanish Civil War with the POUM/"Trotskyite" sympathzing Independent Labour Party and that it influenced his work in both of the aforementioned works. I say insightful because I, of course, had read 1984 and Animal Farm in high school. But hearing it from Orwell's own words, his description of the Barcelona May Days and the reaction to it in the international press, of the Communist Party led suppression of the POUM in Catalonia, etc. . . All made the book very insightful. If you've read 1984 and/or Animal Farm, this is a must read to completely understand those books.

Which side are you on again?
But they've never helped me understand the events of the war. Most books on the Spanish Civil War are either huge weightily 700 page plus tomes or tiny, abridged paperback books that can fit in your pocket. Why? Because the big books are done by authors trying to explain EVERYTHING. How the tactics were effected by the industry which was effected by the politics which was effected by the war and so on. An ocean of information that a reader can drown in.
Or the books are slim summaries, like time lines with all the details snipped away. The chain of cause and effect becomes a pile of broken rings, seeming to have no connection with each other, jumping in leaps and bounds, and the history becomes chaos.
But Orwell's account is just the right size, showing us a sliver of the whole history through the eyes of one man, but a man who happens to be in the right place at the right time. He is there to see the height of the revolution in Barcelona and is also there when that worker's paradise is sabotaged. He is able to explain the reason for all the infighting, describing the horrors of trench warfare and the confusion of Barcelona uprising in May 1937. He is the first author to clearly explain to me HOW the CNT and the FAI fit together and WHY the Communists seemed to change their position every week. He makes sense!
And the sad part it was published before the end of the war, so while pointing out many of the problems on the Republic's side, there was still a shadow of hope. Of course the Fascists won the war.
While reading the book you can see his own views change, you can see him go from an armchair socialist who hung around with the poor for a year to a hard, experienced man who learned to trust nobody and believe in nothing he could not touch. The rats, the bad food, the piles of waste, the human suffering, the daily lies, the unclean pannikins, the partisan posters, the lack of tabacco and the ruthless police. Here we find the seeds of Animal Farm and 1984.
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