Orwell is most well-known for his two famous novels Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, but their dystopian vision was informed by observations of poverty in England (Down and Out in Paris' and London and Road to Wigan Pier), and disillusion with political and national events of the 1930s and 1940s. Homage to Catalonia chronicled his experience of the Spanish Civil War and formulated his revulsion against totalitarianism, highlighted in his subsequent novels. This new collection (edited and with a new introduction by Professor Richard Bradford, and a foreword by Whitbread Prize winner D.J. Taylor) brings together Orwell's two celebrated novels and extracts from his seminal non-fiction, along with with pertinent work by Jack London, who also explored totalitarianism in The Iron Heel (fiction), and the Russian dissident Yevgeny Zamyatin whose own work We (1921) offers a strong warning about a dystopian police state. A new addition to the Flame Tree deluxe Gothic Fantasy series on classic and modern writers, exploring origins and cultural themes in myth, fable and speculative fiction.
