A National Review Top Ten Best Nonfiction Books of the Century âOne of Orwellâs very best books and perhaps the best book that exists on the Spanish Civil War.ââ The New Yorker In 1936, originally intending merely to report on the Spanish Civil War as a journalist, George Orwell found himself embroiled as a participantâas a member of the Workersâ Party of Marxist Unity. Fighting against the Fascists, he described in painfully vivid and occasionally comic detail life in the trenchesâwith a âdemocratic armyâ composed of men with no ranks, no titles, and often no weaponsâand his near fatal wounding. As the politics became tangled, Orwell was pulled into a heartbreaking conflict between his own personal ideals and the complicated realities of political power struggles. Considered one of the finest works by a man V. S. Pritchett called âthe wintry conscience of a generation,â Homage to Catalonia is both Orwellâs memoir of his experiences at the front and his tribute to those who died in what he called a fight for common decency. This edition features a new foreword by Adam Hochschild placing the war in greater context and discussing the evolution of Orwellâs views on the Spanish Civil War. âNo one except George Orwell . . . made the violence and self-dramatization of Spain so burning and terrible.ââ Alfred Kazin, New York Times âA wise book, one that once read will never be forgotten.ââ Chicago Sunday Tribune
