Homage to Catalonia

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George Orwell: Homage to Catalonia (2022, Alma Classics)

English language

Published March 19, 2022 by Alma Classics.

ISBN:
978-1-84749-886-1
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4 stars (79 reviews)

[Homage to Catalonia][1] is [George Orwell][2]'s account of his experiences fighting in the 'Spanish Civil War'. Alongside many British workers, trades unionists, and socialists keen to help the Spanish defend their Republic from General Franco's Fascist forces. Orwell joined the [POUM][3] Militia in the Catalan region of Spain, was injured in the fighting and invalided back to England. After leaving the front line preparatory to leaving Spain, Orwell saw for himself the machinations of the Communist Party leading to the POUM being declared 'Enemies of the People' along with its destruction. Which he expresses in his companion piece the Essay [Looking back on the Spanish War][4]. These are fuller descriptions of events culled from direct experience, than many especially current misrepresentations of the Spanish Conflict. English film director [Ken Loach][5] made a landmark film [Land and Freedom][6] of the Spanish anti fascist struggle with many similarities to George Orwell's story …

114 editions

Orwell in the thick of the Spanish civil war

4 stars

Orwell went to Spain as a journalist but soon signed up as a partisan to fight in the Spanish civil war in the late 1930s. Excellent account of his own experiences and of the chaos that reigned during that period. The political landscape was extremely complex with multitudinous factions and ever shifting alliances.

A writer who experienced war and revolution in a foreign land

5 stars

In my opinion a great introduction to the history of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, of the different factions involved. More than that, this book is a colourful and hugely entertaining account of Orwell and his wife's personal experiences during the conflict

Occasionally, it's very funny. At one moment he is describing chasing a fascist soldier in the dark with a bayonet, and the image in your head is like something from a Tom & Jerry cartoon. Orwell comes across as charming and humble, and like a shrewd observer. Based on this book and from what I've read of his life, he's a historical figure who I would love to meet

Informative, if a little dry at times

3 stars

I first listened to Homage To Catalonia in 2011 and chose to hear it again now mainly because I needed a 1930s book by the end of August to complete the Decade Challenge! The memoir is very much an account of the limited aspects of the Spanish Civil War that Orwell himself witnessed and, as such, I found I still don't really have much understanding of the many factions involved, the outbreak of acronyms and the full storyline of the conflict. This was a war with numerous armies fighting each other, not a simple 'people against fascism' as it is often portrayed. I was interested to learn that Orwell himself had little idea of the full politics when he first enlisted to fight, a naivete which nearly led to his arrest later on.

Jeremy Northam does an excellent job of the narration and his cultured tones suit the rather formal …

Review of 'Homage to Catalonia' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

4.5 Honest portrayal of the war and Eric Blair's role in it. There is some wistfulness, but it's a far cry from Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (itself a good book and, of course, better paced than this eyewitness account). I haven't read much of Orwell's work, but this made me think of picking up more and not only the two classics.

Review of 'Homage to Catalonia' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

War is ugly, really, truly ugly. No amount of glory, no matter a cause, not even a victory can ever make war a thing of beauty! We can play with aesthetics, fancy uniforms and mean-looking guns, yet all war is... In the end, war is just pain. Suffering distilled to its purest of forms. This book is quite an authentically miserable depiction of that. And to remember that this was left on left violence. To think that fascists have won. To realize that throughout history, the failure of leftist politics can be hardly blamed on anyone else but leftists themselves. Hopeless.

"I have no particular love for the idealised 'worker' as he appears in the bourgeois Communist's mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on."

Underrated book

5 stars

Deserves to be up there with Animal Farm and 1984, which seem much more popular in the public mind. The nonfictional context for why the author felt motivated to write those two other books. It seems like there has been a long pro-war vein among conservatives, and plenty of antiwar books on the left; I have read and enjoyed examples from both, but Orwell is one of the people who is both leftwing and happy to endorse violence. Very different feeling in this book than in, for example, many of Kurt Vonnegut's stories. I don't mean to take a position here since I haven't fought in such a war, but it is definitely interesting to see two authors discuss a similar time frame (midcentury antifascist violence) with very different points of view, while still being broadly on the same side of the political spectrum. Favorite anecdote from the book: Orwell …

Review of 'Homage to Catalonia' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Perhaps I was expecting too much from this book. I had heard high praises of it. Maybe I wanted it to unveil some sort of Anarchist Utopia that secretly thrived in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War.
It didn't. Much the opposite perhaps, it reveals the tediousness and futility of war. Orwell's personal (very personal, one might say) account of his participation in the war against Franco's Fascism reads like a personal diary. It's view is limited, personal and or course, biased. He wanted to defeat Fascism and showed up to war. He found the pettiness and poverty of the frontline, the endless waits and the uncomfortable conditions. He does a great job of highlighting how comraderie and spirit were kept in a non-hierarchical army of anarchist or sometimes communist soldiers.
Yet the politics themselves are complicated, the power struggles are intrincate and full of betrayal and lies. The whole …

Review of 'Homenaje a Cataluña' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Ya dice el mismo Orwell que este libro no es una historia de la Guerra Civil, sino la historia de cómo él vivió la guerra y los sucesos de mayo de 1937 que desembocaron en la ilegalización del POUM. Un interesante relato de las vivencias de un inglés que se alistó "para combatir el fascismo" y vivió de primera mano la repercusión internacional de la propaganda soviética.

Review of 'Homage to Catalonia' on 'GoodReads'

4 stars

I really enjoyed reading this for several reasons. Firstly, I've read Orwell's fiction, and it's always interesting to read personal accounts of a fiction writer with whom I'm familiar (especially when they recount such a dramatic time period for the writer and the world). Secondly, I am a radical anti-authoritarian who identifies primarily as an anarcho-syndicalist. Orwell's politics are more or less in line with mine, and it was, frankly, thrilling to hear about revolutionary Spain, the abolishment of "usted" and "señor" in favor of "tú" and "comrade"/"comarada", the equalized pay of non-hierarchical anarchist militia columns, etc. It was also infuriating to read about the involvement of Soviet Russia in opportunistically establishing the International Communist Party as the primary non-fascist force which, ironically, suppressed and jailed anarchists and radical socialists after coming to power in the Republican-held strongholds. While Orwell's commentary on the impartiality of the press outside Spain (writing, …

Review of 'Homage to Catalonia' on 'LibraryThing'

5 stars

This is a very powerful book. It's a first-hand account of how Orwell found himself volunteering for an anti-Fascist brigade, and how utterly disillusioning the whole experience was, as the fractious anti-Fascists wasted enormous amounts of energy fighting each other instead of the real enemy. There are relevant lessons for any political campaign today (certainly I see the same tendencies in the environmental movement), and it also does a lot to illuminate where he was coming from with Animal Farm and 1984. Having studied these at school I was left under the impression that Orwell was a rather pro-establishment writer, but reading his non-fiction makes it clear that he was a strong ideological Socialist, and his critiques of Stalinism have all the bitterness of someone seeing his own ideals betrayed.

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