Best Selling Books by George Orwell

"1984 - the novel marking the end of communism." George Orwell''s 1984 revolves around Winston Smith, an office worker who performs censorship duties in Oceania''s Ministry of Truth as a small cog in the wheel of a monstrous state apparatus. For years, doubts have been gnawing at him about the legitimacy of the system in which even a blink of the eye can cost him his life. The novel begins with the first step towards putting this initially purely intellectual resistance into action: Winston opens a diary. He subsequently falls in love with a young female colleague, and together they begin a love affair that, in the dictatorship that invades every aspect of life, is in itself an act of high treason. Even though they have different views on the society they live in, they are united by the rejection of its narrow moral corset and the desire for individual freedom and, not least, a right to love and feel. While Winston understands HOW the machinery of tyranny works, he does not understand WHY the massive effort of its surveillance and repressive apparatus is undertaken. When they decide to seek contact with the underground opposition and eventually end up in the hands of the repression apparatus of the state, Winston learns the true background of Oceania''s society. Until his death, George Orwell was a convinced socialist - all the greater was the effect his work, published in 1949, had on the political left of the time. On the political left, the Soviet Union was seen as the realisation of Marx''s ideas, the workers'' paradise that would free the enslaved masses from their shackles. Orwell was one of the few leftists of his time who dared to shake this narrative. Under the impression of the undeniable terror of Stalinist rule and its cynical, opportunistic cooperation with fascist and capitalist foreign countries, he criticised the hypocrisy and inhumanities of the real communism with Animal Farm and 1984.

"First published in 1939, Coming Up for Air is a novel written by George Orwell shortly before the outbreak of World War II. Set in 1938 London, the story revolves around a middle-aged insurance salesman George Bowling who lives in a suburban row-house with his wife and two children. As the years roll by, he feels like a hostage to his own wife and children and himself as a prisoner. One day, after winning some money from a bet, George steals away from his family to visit the village where he grew up, to fish for carp in a pool he remembers thirty years before. The pool, alas, is gone, the village has changed beyond recognition, and the principal event of his holiday is an accidental bombing by the RAF. In this novel, Orwell has portrayed a character who seeks to escape in order to come up for air. It is a poignant account of one man''s attempt to recapture childhood innocence as war looms on the horizon."

Striking the balance between comical and pessimistic, this Orwellian novel follows 45-year-old George Bowling as he foresees the horrors of World War Two and attempts to escape the threat of violence and old age by retreating to his childhood town. First published in 1939, Coming Up for Air is a novel by George Orwell examining how commercialism and capitalism are destroying the English countryside and opening the way for new threats. When an insurance salesman, George Bowling, wins money on a horserace, he decides to escape his disillusioned London life and attempt to relive his innocent childhood. He returns to his small town of birth in rural England and hides from the reality of the impending war. Featuring an introductory essay by Orwell, ''Why I Write'', this new edition of the seminal novel is not to be missed.

"En esta novela encontramos al lider unico cuya presencia es ante todo una abstraccion, la negacion del individuo, la sustraccion de la informacion: el Gran Hermano. Es, al mismo tiempo, una advertencia y un deseo. El autor ha construido una metafora del imaginario social del siglo XX, al describir un pais carcelario, vigilado por un lugar desde donde se ve a el y a todos."--Amazon.

"Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell is a raw, unflinching memoir of poverty, survival, and social injustice in two of Europe''s great cities. Based on Orwell''s own experiences, the book takes readers into the gritty underworld of working-class life-washing dishes in the kitchens of Parisian hotels and sleeping in shelters and on the streets of London. With vivid detail and dark humor, Orwell captures the desperation, dignity, and quiet resilience of those living on the margins. Part reportage, part social critique, Down and Out in Paris and London is Orwell''s first major work-a powerful debut that lays bare the realities of poverty and the indifference of society. It''s a compassionate, sharply observed portrait of humanity at its most vulnerable, and a testament to Orwell''s lifelong commitment to truth and justice."

These years saw the publication of The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia, and Coming Up for Air. The most important document that has come to light regarding Orwell''s Spanish experiences is the deposition charging him and Eileen with espionage and high treason, a charge unknown to them. This is fully analysed and can now be read in the context of the disputes that then divided the Left, well illustrated by the letters and documents printed here, notably his bitter response to Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War. The correspondence includes that with Yvonne Davet, who undertook the Translation of Orwell''s books into French; George Kopp, Orwell''s commandent in Spain; and a number of Eileen''s letters. Orwell''s Diary of Events Leading Up to the War'' (2 July - 1 September 1939); his Domestic Diary (9 August 1938 - 29 April 1940), which records in detail his attempts at running a smallholding; his abstracts from Daily Worker and News Chronical reports on the Spanish Civil War; and his Marrakech Notebook with illustrations are reproduced. Many letters not previously published are included, and there is a large number of reviews. This volume also includes a sequence of letters that throws a completely new light on Orwell''s personal relationships.

George Orwell set out ''to make political writing into an art'', and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell''s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. On Reading, the seventh in the Orwell''s Essays series, collects together Orwell''s short essays on books – ''Bookshop Memories'', ''Good Bad Books'', ''Nonsense Poetry'', ''Books vs. Cigarettes'' and ''Confessions of a Book Reviewer'' – giving a rounded view of the great writer''s opinions on the literature of his day, and the vessels in which it was sold.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. Inside the Whale, the eighth in the Orwell’s Essays series, discusses Henry Miller’s controversial Tropic of Cancer, and considers the driving power behind the great books of the 1930s. Comparing Miller with other literary giants, Orwell lambasts the notion that all literature is good, forcing the reader to think for themselves, with his final words ringing in their ears: ‘five thousand novels are published in England every year and four thousand nine hundred of them are tripe.’

1984 es una novela pol�tica de ficci�n dist�pica, escrita por George Orwell entre 1947 y 1948 y publicada el 8 de junio de 1949. La novela introdujo los conceptos del omnipresente y vigilante Gran Hermano o Hermano Mayor, de la notoria habitaci�n 101, de la ubicua polic�a del ensamiento y de la neolengua, adaptaci�n del ingl�s en la que se reduce y se transforma el l�xico con fines represivos, bas�ndose en el principio de que lo que no forma parte de la lengua, no puede ser pensado.Muchos analistas detectan paralelismos entre la sociedad actual y el mundo de 1984, sugiriendo que estamos comenzando a vivir en lo que se ha conocido como sociedad orwelliana,1 una sociedad donde se manipula la informaci�n y se practica la vigilancia masiva y la represi�n pol�tica y social. El t�rmino �orwelliano� se ha convertido en sin�nimo de las sociedades u organizaciones que reproducen actitudes totalitarias y represoras como las representadas en la novela. La novela fue un �xito en t�rminos de ventas y se ha convertido en uno de los m�s influyentes libros del siglo XX.

George Orwell is one of the world''s most influential writers, the visionary author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four and non-fiction classics Down and Out in Paris in London, The Road toWigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia. George Orwell was born Eric Blair in India in 1903 into a comfortable''lower-upper-middle class'' family. Orwell''s father had served the British Empire, and Orwell''s own first job was as a policeman in Burma. Orwell wrote in "Shooting an Elephant" (1936) that his time in the police force had shown him the "dirty work of Empire at close quarters"; the experience made him a lifelong foe of imperialism. By the time of his death in 1950, he was world-renowned as a journalist and author: for his eyewitness reporting on war (shot in the neck in Spain) and poverty (tramping in London, washing dishes in Paris or visiting pits and the poor in Wigan); for his political and cultural commentary, where he stood up to power and said the unsayable (''If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear''); and for his fiction, including two of the most popular novels ever written: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Animal Farm, George Orwell''s satirical political fable, tells the story of a group of barnyard animals who overthrow their human masters in hopes of fashioning for themselves an egalitarian society. As their rebellion germinates and eventually fails in slow motion, Orwell draws deliberate parallels to events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Stalinist era of the former Soviet Union. Animal Farm is considered one of Orwell''s finest works-a flawless novella full of wit, imagination, and stylistic verve. This Warbler Classics edition contains twenty vintage illustrations drawn from Brockhaus Konversations-Lexikon.

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell''s personal account of his experiences and observations fighting for the POUM militia of the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War. The war was one of the defining events of his political outlook and a significant part of what led him to write in 1946, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for Democratic Socialism, as I understand it."