Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell; Unabridged MP3 Audio Book; Narrator Frederick Davidson

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award

In 1936, George Orwell went to Spain to report on the civil war and instead joined the Worker's Party of Marxist Unity (P.O.U.M.) to fight against the Fascists. In this now justly famous account of his experience, he describes both the bleak and the comic aspects of trench warfare on the Aragon front, the Barcelona uprising in May 1937, his nearly fatal wounding just two weeks later, and his escape from Barcelona into France after the P.O.U.M. was suppressed. As important as the story of the war itself is Orwell’s analysis of why the Communist Party sabotaged the workers’ revolution and branded the P.O.U.M. as Trotskyist, which provides an essential key to understanding the outcome of the war and an ironic sidelight on international Communism. It was during this period in Spain that Orwell learned for himself the nature of totalitarianism in practice, an education that laid the groundwork for his great books Animal Farm and 1984.

“Homage to Catalonia is a triumph….The observational passages leave the listener with lasting impressions of Spain and the Spanish character, and indeed the character of the war itself. Frederick Davidson makes a fine reader….The audio presentation adds a new dimension to a text which is required reading for any student of the Spanish Civil War.”— AudioFile

George Orwell (1903-1950), the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, was an English novelist, essayist, and critic. He was born in India and educated at Eton. After service with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, he returned to Europe to earn his living by writing and became notable for his simplicity of style and his journalistic or documentary approach to fiction.