| Orwell: The Road to Airstrip One, Second Edition Contributor(s): Slater, Ian (Author) |
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ISBN: 0773526226 ISBN-13: 9780773526228 Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press OUR PRICE: $28.45 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 2003 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures - Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh |
| Dewey: 828.912 |
| Physical Information: 0.82" H x 5.4" W x 8.54" (0.81 lbs) 312 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people ... So begins one of Orwell's most famous essays. In Orwell: The Road to Airstrip One Ian Slater explains why Orwell was hated in Moulmein and takes us on a fascinating intellectual journey that traces the development of Orwell's political and social criticism. Using a thematic approach, Slater also examines Orwell's self-criticism and, finally, the hidden and corrosive dangers of state and self-imposed censorship in a security-obsessed world. policeman in Burma, through his years as a struggling poet, dishwasher, tramp in Paris, and tutor, schoolmaster, and bookshop assistant in London, to his critical experiences during the Spanish Civil War. Slater takes us beyond the events of Orwell's life to the bitter satire of the Russian Revolution in Animal Farm and the horrifying terror of Room 101 in 1984, Orwell's final novel, and shows that 1984 is as much a warning about the state of mind we call totalitarianism as it is a prophecy of an actual political state. As the war on terrorism continues and governments demand ever-increasing power over the individual in order to combat terrorism, Orwell: The Road to Airstrip One, reissued during Orwell's centenary, warns us that he who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. |