Best Selling Books by George Orwell

75th ANNIVERSARY EDITION “Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power.”—The New Yorker In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be. Lionel Trilling said of Orwell’s masterpiece, “1984 is a profound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating book. It is a fantasy of the political future, and like any such fantasy, serves its author as a magnifying device for an examination of the present.” Though the year 1984 now exists in the past, Orwell’s novel remains an urgent call for the individual willing to speak truth to power.

George Orwell''s ''Animal Farm'' is a classic satirical novella that serves as a powerful allegory for the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent rise of the Soviet Union. Written in a straightforward and accessible style, the book uses farm animals to represent real-life political figures and events, making complex political ideas easily understandable. Orwell''s use of anthropomorphism and symbolism adds depth to the narrative, creating a thought-provoking reflection on power, corruption, and the nature of totalitarianism. This work stands out for its timeless relevance and stark critique of authoritarian regimes. Orwell''s mastery of storytelling and political commentary shines through in every page, making ''Animal Farm'' a must-read for anyone interested in political satire or historical fiction. The book''s lasting impact on literature and political discourse solidifies its place as a seminal work in the canon of English literature.

In "Nineteen eighty-four", one of the 20th century''s great myth-makers George Orwell takes a cold look at the future.

George Orwell was a novelist, essayist and critic best known for his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. He was a man of strong opinions who addressed some of the major political movements of his times, including imperialism, fascism and communism. Animal Farm was published in 1945 when Orwell, a democratic socialist, was angered at Joseph Stalin for betraying the ideas of the Russian Revolution. In fact, that is the basis of Orwell''s book. The characters in Animal Farm resemble significant people that impacted the Russian Revolution. These characters act similarly to the real people and actions that were done in the past. Through this book, George Orwell exposes Stalin''s true nature and evils using a corrupt pig named Napoleon that eventually dictates the farm. Animal Farm is one of the most influential political texts ever written.

Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell''s nightmare vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff''s attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell''s prescience of modern life--the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language--and his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written. --Amazon.com.

This Excellent Collection brings together Orwell''s longer, major books and a fine selection of shorter pieces. With great originality and wit Orwell unfolds his views on subjects ranging from a revaluation of Charles Dickens to the nature of Socialism, from a comic yet profound discussion of naughty seaside postcards to a spirited defence of English cooking. Displaying an almost unrivalled mastery of English plain prose, Orwell''s Books created a unique literary manner from the process of thinking aloud and continue to challenge, move and entertain. This Books created and collected in George Orwell''s Most important Works illuminate the life and work of one of the most individual writers of the XX century - a man who elevated political writing to an art. This Collection included: · 1984 · ANIMAL FARM · A CLERGYMAN''S DAUGHTER · BURMESE DAYS · COMING UP FOR AIR · DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON · HOMAGE TO CATALONIA · KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING · LOOKING BACK ON THE SPANISH WAR · THE LION AND THE UNICORN · THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER

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. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell''s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ''four great motives for writing'' – ''sheer egoism'', ''aesthetic enthusiasm'', ''historical impulse'' and ''political purpose'' – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell''s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer''s oeuvre.

1984 or Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, is a dystopian novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949. 1984 is one of George Orwell''s most powerful politically charged novels, a beautifully crafted warning against the dangers of a totalitarian society, and one of the most famous novels in the dystopian genre. Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of the ruling party in London whose every move is monitored by telescreens. Everywhere Winston goes, the party''s omniscient leader, Big Brother, watches him. This is an important novel not only for its stark warning against abusive authority (and its somewhat ironic contribution to modern television content), but also for its insights into the power of manipulating language, history, and the psychology of fear and control. These issues are perhaps even more pertinent today than when Orwell penned his novel.

Coming Up for Air is the seventh book by English writer George Orwell, published in June 1939 by Victor Gollancz. It was written between 1938 and 1939 while Orwell spent time recuperating from illness in French Morocco, mainly in Marrakesh. He delivered the completed manuscript to Victor Gollancz upon his return to London in March 1939. The story follows George Bowling, a 45-year old husband, father, and insurance salesman, who foresees World War II and attempts to recapture idyllic childhood innocence and escape his dreary life by returning to Lower Binfield, his birthplace. The novel is comical and pessimistic, with its view that speculative builders, commercialism, and capitalism are killing the best of rural England and the existence of new, external threats. Book Summary: As a child, Orwell lived at Shiplake and Henley in the Thames Valley. His father, Richard Walmesley Blair, was a civil servant in British India, and he lived a genteel life with his mother and two sisters, though spending much of the year at boarding school at Eastbourne and later at Eton in Britain. He particularly enjoyed fishing and shooting rabbits with a neighbouring family. In 1937 Orwell spent some months fighting in the Spanish Civil War. He was wounded in the throat in May 1937, by a Fascist sniper at Huesca. Orwell was severely ill in 1938 and was advised to spend the winter in a warm climate. The novelist L. H. Myers anonymously gave £300 to enable this and Orwell went with his wife to North Africa where he stayed, in French Morocco, mainly in Marrakesh, from September 1938 to March 1939. (Orwell never learned the source of the money and he accepted it only on condition that it be considered a loan. He repaid the loan, eight years later, when he began making money from the success of Animal Farm.) Orwell wrote Coming Up for Air while he was in North Africa and left the manuscript at his agent''s office within a few hours of arriving back in England on March 30, 1939. It was submitted to Victor Gollancz, who had an option on Orwell''s next three novels, in spite of the ''cold treatment which [Orwell] had been given when Homage to Catalonia was rejected.'' In fact Orwell heard in April 1939 that Gollancz had reservations about the book, and was delaying a decision to accept it. The descriptions in the novel of a character who lectures at a meeting of Gollancz''s Left Book Club, and of the meeting itself, were such that Gollancz ''could not have helped being offended by them.'' Nevertheless, the publisher did bring out the novel without demanding major changes and it was published on June 12, 1939. It was the last Orwell novel to bear the Gollancz imprint. The themes of the book are nostalgia, the folly of trying to go back and recapture past glories and the easy way the dreams and aspirations of one''s youth can be smothered by the humdrum routine of work, marriage and getting old. It is written in the first person, with George Bowling, the forty-five-year-old protagonist, who reveals his life and experiences while undertaking a trip back to his boyhood home as an adult.

George Orwell is a major figure in twentieth-century literature. The author of Down and Out in Paris and London, Nineteen Eighty-four, and Animal Farm, he published ten books and two collections of essays during his lifetime - but in terms of actual words, produced much more than seems possible for someone who died at the age of forty-six and was often struggling against poverty and ill health. His essays, letters, and journalism are among the most memorable, lucid, and intelligent ever written, the work of a master craftsman and a brilliant mind. Taken as a whole they form an essential collection, and read in toto and sequentially, they provide a remarkably literary self-portrait of an engaged, and consistently engaging, writer.

globally known for his works: Animal Farm; 1984; Down and Out in Paris and London; Burmese Days; Keep the Aspidistra Flying, among others. Down and Out in Paris and London is a memoir of the most defining period of the author''s life and his first work. It was upon its publication in 1933 that the pseudonym George Orwell was born, at the suggestion of his editor. After working as a British Empire police officer in Burma, George Orwell decided to understand the life, ways, and thoughts of the poor population and went to live as one of them. Orwell lived in destitution for a long time before finding work as a dishwasher in a hotel, and all the experiences he had in both cities resulted in this precious book. In Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell discusses his times living in poverty in such a realistic and moving way that it is impossible to put the book down before finishing it.

Appearing for the first time in one volume, these trenchant letters tell the eloquent narrative of Orwell’s life in his own words. From his school days to his tragic early death, George Orwell, who never wrote an autobiography, chronicled the dramatic events of his turbulent life in a profusion of powerful letters. Indeed, one of the twentieth century’s most revered icons was a lively, prolific correspondent who developed in rich, nuanced dispatches the ideas that would influence generations of writers and intellectuals. This historic work—never before published in America and featuring many previously unseen letters—presents an account of Orwell’s interior life as personal and absorbing as readers may ever see. Over the course of a lifetime, Orwell corresponded with hundreds of people, including many distinguished political and artistic figures. Witty, personal, and profound, the letters tell the story of Orwell’s passionate first love that ended in devastation and explains how young Eric Arthur Blair chose the pseudonym "George Orwell." In missives to luminaries such as T. S. Eliot, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Cyril Connolly, and Henry Miller, he spells out his literary and philosophical beliefs. Readers will encounter Orwell’s thoughts on matters both quotidian (poltergeists and the art of playing croquet) and historical—including his illuminating descriptions of war-shattered Barcelona and pronouncements on bayonets and the immanent cruelty of chaining German prisoners. The letters also reveal the origins of his famous novels. To a fan he wrote, "I think, and have thought ever since the war began…that our cause is the better, but we have to keep on making it the better, which involves constant criticism." A paragraph before, he explained that the British intelligentsia in 1944 were "perfectly ready for dictatorial methods, secret police, systematic falsification of history," prefiguring the themes of 1984. Entrusting the manuscript of Animal Farm to Leonard Moore, his literary agent, Orwell describes it as "a sort of fairy story, really a fable with political meaning…This book is murder from the Communist point of view." Hardly known outside a small circle of Orwell scholars, these rare letters include Orwell’s message to Dwight Macdonald of 5 December 1946 explaining Animal Farm; his correspondence with his first translator, R. N. Raimbault (with English translations of the French originals); and the moving encomium written about Orwell by his BBC head of department after his service there. The volume concludes with a fearless account of the painful illness that took Orwell’s life at age forty-seven. His last letter concerns his son and his estate and closes with the words, "Beyond that I can’t make plans at present." Meticulously edited and fully annotated by Peter Davison, the world’s preeminent Orwell scholar, the volume presents Orwell “in all his varieties” and his relationships with those most close to him, especially his first wife, Eileen. Combined with rare photographs and hand-drawn illustrations, George Orwell: A Life in Letters offers "everything a reader new to Orwell needs to know…and a great deal that diehard fans will be enchanted to have" (New Statesmen).

This title brings George Orwell''s classic satire Animal Farm together with the author''s other works exploring the nature of politics and the Second World War. His topics include: corrupt political language, the oppressive British Empire, and a wry review of Mein Kampf .

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell''s personal account of his experiences and observations fighting for the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War. The war was one of the shaping events on 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."

One of the BBC''s ''100 Novels that Shaped the World'' ''Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past'' 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. George Orwell''s dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four is perhaps the most pervasively influential book of the twentieth century.

First published in 1949, George Orwell''s Nineteen Eighty-Four has lost none of the impact with which it first hit readers. Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in London, chief city of Airstrip One. Big Brother stares out from every poster, the Thought Police uncover every act of betrayal. When Winston finds love with Julia, he discovers that life does not have to be dull and deadening, and awakens to new possibilities. Despite the police helicopters that hover and circle overhead, Winston and Julia begin to question the Party; they are drawn towards conspiracy. Yet Big Brother will not tolerate dissent - even in the mind. For those with original thoughts they invented Room 101. . .

ReviewTrue Agony of a Socialist Orwell is obviously angry at the way Socialism has been distorted by Stalin. Using Animal characters as symbols Orwell honestly mocks and criticizes the Russian leadership under Lenin. It is a very easy to read book giving good perspectives on the Socialist Revolution. --Abhishek Kona Aug 22, 2011Animal Farm is a satirical allegory on the Russian Revolution. Orwell explains it, It is the history of revolution that went wrong. It tells the simple and tragic story of what happens when the oppressed farm rebel to attain freedom from Mr. Jones. It is about their attempt to rule the farm themselves on the basis of equality. The animals had initially aimed to form a utopian society, where each would work according to his capacity, respecting the needs of the others. But, they failed to do so. And, Animal Farm ended up being a dictatorship of the pigs that were the brightest, but did no physical work in reality. The main action of the story stands for The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the early years of the Soviet Union. Animalism is a metaphor for Communism. Manor farm is an allegory of Russia, Mr. Jones is Russian C-Zar, Old Major stands for Karl Marx, and Snowball represents Leo Trotsky. Napolean stands for Stalin, while the dogs are the secret police. The horse, Boxer stands for the working class which works constantly for the greater good while Squealer is the propagandist. The novel is skillfully organized and presents the horrors of communism through simple story-telling. It presents what propaganda and brain washing do to the people living under the dictatorship. How the fickle minded people were swayed easily by the pigs, who managed to reverse the seven commandments and reduce them to Four legs good, two legs better . I would recommend this book to everyone above 14 years of age who has some knowledge about communism or a hint of what happened during the Russian Revolution of 1917. The book is gripping as there is always something happening. It ends with the pigs becoming mush like humans and changing the name of the farm back to the Manor Farm . The ending was sad it shows how power turns comrades into tyrannical dictators. --Diksha Mahajan Aug 14, 2012George Orwell is probably one of the few authors who has more than one book featuring regularly in the all the favorites of most people. In such a short book, we get to experience the entire range of the human emotions - probably characterized by the animals. But, what this book basically makes us realize is the fact that politics is relevant at all times. --Deep Agrawal Mar 2, 2012About the AuthorAbout the Author: The author of Animal Farm is George Orwell. His real name was Eric Arthur Blair. He was a very popular novelist, essayist, critic and journalist. His works spoke out against the social injustice that was prevalent at that time. He was in favour of democratic socialism and was opposed to totalitarianism. He continues to be held in high esteem as one of the most influential voices of his time, who spoke out about the English culture, as it was, during his lifespan.

The downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human master and take over management of the land. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. Setting out with the highest ideals and the best of intentions, the animals soon discover that the craving for power among some of them leads inexorably to dictatorship, corruption and disillusionment.

"Animal Farm" is a novel with regards to a gathering of animals who assume liability for the homestead they live on. The animals get exhausted of their lord, Farmer Jones, so they show him out. When they are liberated from the dictator Jones, life on the homestead is useful for some time and there is potential for a more joyful fate of less work, better training and more food. Nonetheless, inconvenience brews as the pigs, Napoleon and Snowball, battle for the hearts and brains of different animals on the homestead. Napoleon holds onto power forcibly and winds up... "Animal Farm" was composed by George Orwell and distributed in 1945 and it is considered by numerous his best book. This novel is a moral story - despite the fact that it is set on a homestead and stars a cast of livestock, it mirrors the occasions of the Russian upset of 1917. The creatures are for the most part cunning portrayals of Russian government officials, electors and laborers. Orwell utilized the novel to make his perspectives on Russian pioneers heard.

Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often referred to as 1984, is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell''s ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society.Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia.More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated. The story takes place in an imagined future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda. Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a totalitarian superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking.Big Brother, the leader of the Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that he may not even exist. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Outer Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He enters into a forbidden relationship with a colleague, Julia, and starts to remember what life was like before the Party came to power. Nineteen Eighty-Four has become a classic literary example of political and dystopian fiction. It also popularised the term "Orwellian" as an adjective, with many terms used in the novel entering common usage, including "Big Brother", "doublethink", "Thought Police", "thoughtcrime", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "2 + 2 = 5", "proles", "Two Minutes Hate", "telescreen", and "Room 101". Time included it on its 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.It was placed on the Modern Library''s 100 Best Novels, reaching No. 13 on the editors'' list and No. 6 on the readers'' list.In 2003, the novel was listed at No. 8 on The Big Read survey by the BBC.Parallels have been drawn between the novel''s subject matter and real life instances of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and violations of freedom of expression among other themes.