Orwell's Roses

Informationen zum Autor Rebecca Solnit Klappentext Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography An exhilarating romp through Orwell's life and times and also through the life and times of roses. Margaret Atwood A captivating account of Orwell as gardener, lover, parent, and endlessly curious thinker. Claire Messud, Harper's Nobody who reads it will ever think of Nineteen Eighty-Four in quite the same way. Vogue A lush exploration of politics, roses, and pleasure, and a fresh take on George Orwell as an avid gardener whose political writing was grounded by his passion for the natural world In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses. So be-gins Rebecca Solnit's new book, a reflection on George Orwell's passionate gardening and the way that his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and on the intertwined politics of nature and power. Sparked by her unexpected encounter with the roses he reportedly planted in 1936, Solnit's account of this overlooked aspect of Orwell's life journeys through his writing and his actionsfrom going deep into the coal mines of England, fighting in the Spanish Civil War, critiquing Stalin when much of the international left still supported him (and then critiquing that left) to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism. Through Solnit's celebrated ability to draw unexpected connections, readers are drawn onward from Orwell's own work as a writer and gardener to encounter photographer Tina Modotti's roses and her politics, agriculture and illusion in the USSR of his time with forcing lemons to grow in impossibly cold conditions, Orwell's slave-owning ancestors in Jamaica, Jamaica Kincaid's examination of colonialism and imperialism in the flower garden, and the brutal rose industry in Colombia that supplies the American market. The book draws to a close with a rereading of Nineteen Eighty-Four that completes Solnit's portrait of a more hopeful Orwell, as well as offering a meditation on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of resistance. Leseprobe One Day of the Dead In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses. I had known this formore than three decades and never thought enough about whatthat meant until a November day a few years ago, when I was underdoctor's orders to recuperate at home in San Francisco and was alsoon a train from London to Cambridge to talk with another writerabout a book I'd written. It was November 2, and where I'm fromthat's celebrated as Día de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. Backhome, my neighbors had built altars to those who had died in the pastyear, decorated with candles, food, marigolds, photographs of andletters to those they'd lost, and in the evening people were going topromenade and fill the streets to pay their respects at the open-airaltars and eat pan de muerto, bread of the dead, some of their facespainted to look like skulls adorned with flowers in that Mexican traditionthat finds life in death and death in life. In a lot of Catholicplaces, it's a day to visit cemeteries, clean family graves, and adornthem with flowers. Like the older versions of Halloween, it's a timewhen the borders between life and death become porous. But I was on a morning train rolling north from King's Cross inLondon, gazing out the window as London's density dissipated intolower and lower buildings spread farther and farther apart. And then the train was rolling through farmland, with grazing sheep and cowsand wheat fields and clusters of bare trees, beautiful even under a wintrywhite sky. I had an errand or perhaps a quest to carry out. I waslooking for some treesperhapsa Cox's orange pippin apple tree andsome other fruit treesfor Sa...

Autorentext
Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books, including Recollections of My Nonexistence, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, The Faraway Nearby, A Paradise Built in Hell, River of Shadows, and Wanderlust. She is also the author of Men Explain Things to Me and many essays on feminism, activism and social change, hope, and the climate crisis. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a regular contributor to The Guardian and other publications.

Klappentext

**Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

“An exhilarating romp through Orwell’s life and times and also through the life and times of roses.” —Margaret Atwood

“A captivating account of Orwell as gardener, lover, parent, and endlessly curious thinker.” —Claire Messud, Harper's

“Nobody who reads it will ever think of Nineteen Eighty-Four in quite the same way.” —Vogue

A lush exploration of politics, roses, and pleasure, and a fresh take on George Orwell as an avid gardener whose political writing was grounded by his passion for the natural world

“In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses.” So be-gins Rebecca Solnit’s new book, a reflection on George Orwell’s passionate gardening and the way that his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and on the intertwined politics of nature and power.

Sparked by her unexpected encounter with the roses he reportedly planted in 1936, Solnit’s account of this overlooked aspect of Orwell’s life journeys through his writing and his actions—from going deep into the coal mines of England, fighting in the Spanish Civil War, critiquing Stalin when much of the international left still supported him (and then critiquing that left) to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism.

Through Solnit’s celebrated ability to draw unexpected connections, readers are drawn onward from Orwell‘s own work as a writer and gardener to encounter photographer Tina Modotti’s roses and her politics, agriculture and illusion in the USSR of his time with forcing lemons to grow in impossibly cold conditions, Orwell’s slave-owning ancestors in Jamaica, Jamaica Kincaid’s examination of colonialism and imperialism in the flower garden, and the brutal rose industry in Colombia that supplies the American market. The book draws to a close with a rereading of Nineteen Eighty-Four that completes Solnit’s portrait of a more hopeful Orwell, as well as offering a meditation on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of resistance.