George OrwellHomage to Catalonia

The book is just amazing

Received the book in good condition. The font is good and readable. The book is about the experiences of George Orwell in the Spanish Civil War.

Orwell does a good job of going into detailed descriptions of the environment and atmosphere around his visit to Spain during the civil war. Worth a quick read, some parts/ chapters such as the explanation of the political parties got tiresome and confusing but even the author advises you to skip them based on interest.

Very good book about the political scenario of Spain civil war.. Truly interesting to read

My father loves it.

I had to buy this again. I was 21 when I read this. Now, I'm 45. I'm a life long socialist and this book sums up perfectly how the left always fights itself more than the opposition. This is the book I always quote whenever the left turns in on itself (which is always!.) "My cause is more important than your cause etc." is pretty much the left. 70 odd years later, it's still the same lol. UK Labour party..are you watching! Classic book!

If you've read "1984" and "Animal Farm", and want more of the same author's superb prose, this book is worth your time. Non-fiction like "The Road to Wigan Pier", unlike that book this one focuses on a struggle outside Britain - the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that nowadays tends to be relegated to a footnote in history. So if you are unfamiliar with the events and participating factions, let George Orwell be your guide. His descriptions of his experiences (including a serious neck wound) are intentionally unsparing, and designed to strip away any glamour attached to war and highllight both the periodic brutality and routine squalor. Highly recommended.

A fascinating account of the author's own limited involvement in what became known as the Spanish Civil War. It is a testimony to the futility of war and to the shifting complexity of the politics involved which Orwell takes some time to try to explain. It's an interesting read and when trivial things go wrong in our own lives it makes us grateful that we don't have to suffer rotting food, foul water, body lice, the daily fear of injury and death and all the other hardships that war brings. The fact that Orwell and thousands of others actually volunteered for this makes it and even more remarkable and you find yourself wondering why, and did the volunteers from outside Spain have any idea of the complex politics involved before they went? It's clear from early pages that this was no simple fight of communists against fascists. If you thought that (as I did), this book will put you straight.Beyond the political complexities and the grimness of war, there is also a glint of humour, hope and humanity that shines through in Orwell's writing which makes the book an informative and entertaining read.

Just finished reading George Orwell’s book on his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. I had been looking since long to read a book about the Spanish Civil War and many people had recommended reading Earnest Hemingway’s novel “For whom the bell tolls”. But due to being a novel I consider it derivative in nature (although I am not averse to reading it) and I was looking for something first hand. That is why I chose to go for this one and believe you me it has not disappointed. Although it covers only six months of period from that time and concentrates only on the incidents happening in Catalonia and is much shorter compared to the tomes written on this topic it still manages to capture the essence of the War. I well and truly believe that the Spanish Civil War was not only a military conflict but a conflict of ideologies – conservative Monarchists allied with the Fascists against the Republicans who had the communists and anarchists in tow. It was also a testing ground for the engines of war for some. And this class struggle between authoritarian and democratic forms of government is reflected very well in Orwell’s book. Orwell describes in detail his time as a militiaman for the P.O.U.M., the time he spent preparing for the imminent conflict with the Fascists, life as a corporal in the trenches in the Aragon front, the mingled boredom of a stalemate, his involvement in the Barcelona May Days street fighting and his getting shot in the throat by a sniper on his return to the front. Various situations Orwell finds himself in gives it an almost dark, gallows humour flavor like when he describes the tendency of the Spaniards to procrastinate everything to manana (tomorrow). Orwell details noteworthy changes in the social and political atmosphere of Barcelona when he returns after three months at the front. He also correctly predicts the outcome of the Civil war that it would end with a Fascist government in power. His description of the Sagrada Familia Cathedral is what some may consider almost blasphemous. The book climaxes at the moment when the Communist Party of Spain back stabbed the POUM and arrested its leaders. It has an almost thrilling and tragic end as Orwell tries unsuccessfully to rescue his friend and commander Georges Kopp from the prison and a certain death. His musings of the Civil War and the nature of the two fighting political ideologies gives us a sneak peek at how these experiences influenced him in writing ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’, the works he is most known for. Now that I have a clearer picture of the Spanish Civil War in my mind, I might enjoy reading Hemingway’s ‘For whom the bell tolls’.

Orwell had six rules for good writing:Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in printNever use a long word where a short one will doIf it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.Never use the passive where you can use the activeNever use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalentBreak any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous These rules pretty much describe Orwell's own writing style, which is simple and straightforward, yet elegant and engaging. He was a man who lived a very full and somewhat eccentric life, giving up a career in the Burmese police force to wander around Britain as a Tramp and to live in poverty in Paris. He was very connected to working people and so understandably was drawn to the socialist side against Franco's Fascists in the Spanish Civil War (1936-9).This is a remarkably detailed account of an ordinary foot soldier's life in wartime - comparable to Robert Graves' `Goodbye to All That' about his time in the trenches in WW1. Orwell doesn't have the big picture of how the war is going or what the strategy is but can see the hopeless organisation and pitiful logistics of the Socialists. He's cold, hungry, ill clothed and badly armed but it's remarkable how cheerful he and his comrades remain. I would guess that this is an almost universal account of the nonsense of war from a soldier's point of view.In the second part of the book he goes on leave to Barcelona and gives an account of the complex political rivalry between the socialist factions. As an account of the home front this is less successful as the political infighting seems ridiculously petty and un-affecting compared to the soldier's life. Eventually however the group to which Orwell belongs (POUM) losses the political fight and becomes a banned organisation so that he has to flee Spain to avoid arrest.In many ways this is bang up-to-date - I can well believe that anti-government groups in, say, the Arab spring are very much like Orwell's socialists - fervent for their cause, but badly equipped and divided politically. To that extent this is a very modern book that has some universal truths about revolution and political change and which is well worth reading.