George Bowling, the hero of this comic novel, is a middle-aged insurance salesman who lives in an average English suburban row house with a wife and two children. One day, after winning some money from a bet, he goes back to the village where he grew up, to fish for carp in a pool he remembers from 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. Views: 1 003
As a critic, George Orwell cast a wide net. Equally at home discussing Charles Dickens and Charlie Chaplin, he moved back and forth across the porous borders between essay and journalism, high art and low. A frequent commentator on literature, language, film, and drama throughout his career, Orwell turned increasingly to the critical essay in the 1940s, when his most important experiences were behind him and some of his most incisive writing lay ahead.All Art Is Propaganda follows Orwell as he demonstrates in piece after piece how intent analysis of a work or body of work gives rise to trenchant aesthetic and philosophical commentary."how to be interesting, line after line."
Contents:
Charles Dickens
Boys' Weeklies
Inside the Whale
Drama Reviews: *The Tempest, The Peaceful Inn*
Film Review: *The Great Dictator*
Wells, Hitler and the World State
The Art of Donald McGill
No, Not One
Rudyard Kipling
T.S. Eliot
Can Socialists Be Happy?
Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali
Propaganda and Demotic Speech
Raffles and Miss Blandish
Good Bad Books
The Prevention of Literature
Politics and the English Language
Confessions of a Book Reviewer
Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of *Gulliver's Travels*
Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool
Writers and Leviathan
Review of *The Heart of the Matter* by Graham Greene
Reflections on Gandhi Views: 969
First published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1859, The Lifted Veil is now one of George Eliot's most widely read and critically discussed short stories. A dark fantasy drawing on contemporary scientific interest in the physiology of the brain, mesmerism, phrenology, and experiments in revification, it is Eliot's anatomy of her own moral philosophy. Narrated by an egocentric, morbid young clairvoyant man, the story also explores fiction's ability to offer insight into the self, as well as being a remarkable portrait of an artist whose visionary powers merely blight his life.
Published as a companion piece to The Lifted Veil, Brother Jacob is by contrast Eliot's literary homage to Thackeray, a satirical modern fable that draws telling parallels between eating and reading. With an illuminating introduction by Helen Small, this Oxford World's Classics edition makes newly available two fascinating short stories which fully deserve to be read alongside Eliot's novels. Views: 918
Gordon Comstock loathes dull, middle-class respectability and worship of money. He gives up a 'good job' in advertising to work part-time in a bookshop, giving him more time to write. But he slides instead into a self-induced poverty that destroys his creativity and his spirit. Only Rosemary, ever-faithful Rosemary, has the strength to challenge his commitment to his chosen way of life. Through the character of Gordon Comstock, Orwell reveals his own disaffection with the society he once himself renounced. Views: 903
*Alternate Cover Edition can be found [here](https://www./book/show/20691208-1984). *
Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal. Views: 848
Caterina Sarti is the orphaned daughter of an Italian music master who has been brought up by the aristocratic Cheverel family. In love with the Cheverel heir, Anthony Wybrow, her hopes of marrying him are frustrated by the discovery that not only has Anthony merely been playing with her affections, but his family will never accept her as their equal. Mr. Gilfil, the faithful vicar, rescues Caterina from her despair, but not before she has been irrevocably damaged by her unkind treatment. A masterly evocation of tragic love, Mr. Gilfil's Love Story also reflects George Eliot's deep ambivalence towards the upper classes. "Elegant and expressive…this is the most original work of fiction George Eliot ever wrote." (David Lodge).
Born Mary Ann Evans, Victorian novelist George Eliot (1819–1880) is the author of a number of remarkable works, including the masterpiece Middlemarch. Views: 818
Two Sisters, by the international bestselling author Asne Seierstad, tells the unforgettable story of a family divided by faith. Sadiq and Sara, Somali immigrants raising a family in Norway, one day discover that their teenage daughters Leila and Ayan have vanished--and are en route to Syria to aid the Islamic State. Seierstad's riveting account traces the sisters' journey from secular, social democratic Norway to the front lines of the war in Syria, and follows Sadiq's harrowing attempt to find them.
Employing the same mastery of narrative suspense she brought to The Bookseller of Kabul and One of Us, Seierstad puts the problem of radicalization into painfully human terms, using instant messages and other primary sources to reconstruct a family's crisis from the inside. Eventually, she takes us into the hellscape of the Syrian civil war, as Sadiq risks his life in pursuit of his daughters, refusing to let them disappear into the maelstrom--even after they marry ISIS fighters. Two Sisters is a relentless thriller and a feat of reporting with profound lessons about belief, extremism, and the meaning of devotion. Views: 810
From one of the most admired public intellectuals of our time, and a multi-award winning and #1 bestselling author, comes a collection of his most important and controversial essays on the theme of culture and politics and how the two relate. Views: 756
These essays, reviews and articles illuminate the life and work of one of the most individual writers of this century - a man who created a unique literary manner from the process of thinking aloud and who elevated political writing to an art. Views: 697
This outstanding collection brings together Orwell's longer, major essays and a fine selection of shorter pieces that includes "Shooting an Elephant", "My Country Right or Left", "Decline of an English Murder" and "A Hanging". With great originality and wit Orwell unfolds his views on subjects ranging from a revaluation of Charles Dickens to a spirited defence of English cooking. Displaying an almost unrivalled mastery of English plain prose style, Orwell's essays challenge, move and entertain. Views: 680
For one hundred and one days Asne Seierstad worked as a reporter in Baghdad. Always in search of a story far less obvious than the American military invasion, Seierstad brings to life the world behind the headlines in this compelling- and heartbreaking-account of her time among the people of Iraq. From the moment she first arrived in Baghdad on a ten-day visa, she was determined to unearth the modern secrets of an ancient place and to find out how the Iraqi people really live. What do people miss most when their world changes overnight? What do they choose to say when they can suddenly say what they like? Seierstad reveals what life is like for everyday people under the constant threat of attack- first from the Iraqi government and later from American bombs. Displaying the novelist's eye and lyrical storytelling that have won her awards around the world, Seierstad here brings to life an unforgettable cast of characters, from foreign press apparatchik Uday, to Zahra, a mother of three, to Aliya, the guide and translator who becomes a friend. Putting their trust in a European woman with no obvious agenda, these and other Iraqis speak for themselves, to tell the stories we never see on the evening news. Views: 651
In the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and 7/7, Britain's relationship with America seems to have intensified. Through an analysis of its various manifestations - from James Bond to Winston Churchill - this book asks what this relationship consists of. Views: 622
“What I want, you know,” said Mr. Tulliver of Dorlcote Mill-”what I want is to give Tom a good eddication. That was what I was thinking of when I gave notice for him to leave th’ academy at Lady Day. I meant to put him to a downright good school at Midsummer. “The two years at th’ academy ‘ud ha’ done well enough,” the miller went on, “if I’d meant to make a miller and farmer of him like myself. But I should like Tom to be a bit of a scholard, so as he might be up to the tricks o’ these fellows as talk fine and write with a flourish. It ‘ud be a help to me wi’ these lawsuits and things.” Views: 567
When life becomes a series of disasters will you still move forward and walk with hope or will you stop the race and end the journey without even trying again?This is a short story about a girl and her losses in life. How she met someone who eventually changed the course of her life and how she had able to handle every circumstances that walked her way.Rape Day Wednesday is an action – adventure love story. General Madid is about to receive a visit from his worst nightmare – Jimmy West. Dear Air Rescue I am Jackie Cots, a nurse for an International Medical Rescue in Somalia. I am writing this letter on behalf of Aisha Hulow, a Somalia woman who lives in the Village of Coato. The lady wants me to tell you about the death of Mary Johnson, who was attacked by soldiers in her medical clinic, repeatedly raped, then shot and left for dead. When the soldiers left, Aisha dragged Mary into her hut where she died several hours later in her arms. Her dying words were to tell Jimmy West, that she still loved him and had never forgotten him. Please find attached a one dollar bill. The lady insists on me sending you the only thing of wealth, she owns. She hopes that you can help her hire someone who can save her little village from these soldiers. It appears that every Wednesday morning, a Renegade General Madid allows his soldiers to come into the village and rape all the women and girls as a treat for loyalty.Please pass on this letter to Jimmy West. Yours truly,Jackie Cots for Aisha Hulow Views: 566
