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Rebecca Solnit: Orwell’s Roses (Paperback, 2021, Granta)

“In the year 1936 a writer planted roses.” So begins Rebecca Solnit’s new book, a …

pleasant inquiry in botanically-tinged biography

In Solnit's delightful way, chapter essays bound between slices of Orwell's biography and bibliography and social commentary on the role of roses, labor, beauty, colonialism, and fascism's conflicts with truth and language. As these are pervasive themes for Orwell too, the ground is plentiful for analysis, all brought back to earth in the garden.