Orwell's Roses - Hardcover

Solnit, Rebecca

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1783785454 ISBN 13: 9781783785452

Publisher: Granta Books, 2021

Synopsis

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 'I loved this book... An exhilarating romp through Orwell's life and times' Margaret Atwood 'Outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening' George Orwell In 1936 Orwell planted roses at his cottage in Hertfordshire. Over eighty years later Rebecca Solnit encounters them, and is inspired to explore a different side to the great writer and activist to the one we know so well. Following his journey from the coal mines of England to taking up arms in the Spanish Civil War, and his explosive critiques of Stalin and authoritarianism, here Solnit finds a more hopeful Orwell. And in her dialogue with the author and his fascination with nature, she makes unexpected connections with the colonial legacy of the flower garden, discovers photographer Tina Modotti's extraordinary roses, and reveals Stalin's strange obsession with growing lemons in impossibly cold conditions. A fresh reading of a towering figure of the 20th century, Orwell's Roses finds solace and solutions for the political and environmental challenges we face today, and is a remarkable reflection on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of resistance. 'Luminous...It is efflorescent, a study that seeds and blooms, propagates thoughts, and tends to historical associations' New Statesman 'A genuinely extraordinary mind, whose curiosity, intelligence and willingness to learn seem unbounded' Irish Times

About this title

About the Author

Rebecca Solnit is author of, among other books, Call Them By Their True Names, The Mother of All Questions, Men Explain Things to Me, Wanderlust, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, the NBCC award-winning River of Shadows and A Paradise Built in Hell. A contributing editor to Harper's, she writes regularly for the London Review of Books and the Los Angeles Times. She lives in San Francisco.

From the Back Cover

Roses, pleasure, and politics: a fresh take on Orwell as an avid gardener, whose political writing was grounded in his passion for the natural world.

Edition details

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1783785454
• ISBN 13: 9781783785452
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320