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Start giftingHomage to Catalonia
Narrator
Frederick Davidson
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Length
8 hours 26 minutes
Language
English
In 1936, George Orwell went to Spain to report on the civil war and instead joined the POUM militia 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 Party of Maxist Unification (POUM) 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 POUM 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.
Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), better known by his pen-name, George Orwell, was born in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. An author and journalist, Orwell was one of the most prominent and influential figures in twentieth-century literature. His unique political allegory Animal Farm was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with the dystopia of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which brought him world-wide fame. His novels and non-fiction include Burmese Days, Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia.
Frederick Davidson (1932–2005), also known as David Case, was one of the most prolific readers in the audiobook industry, recording more than eight hundred audiobooks in his lifetime, including over two hundred for Blackstone Audio. Born in London, he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and performed for many years in radio plays for the British Broadcasting Company before coming to America in 1976. He received AudioFile’s Golden Voice Award and numerous Earphones Awards and was nominated for a Grammy for his readings.
Reviews
“One of Orwell’s very best books and perhaps the best book that exists on the Spanish Civil War.”
“Homage to Catalonia reminds us that Orwell was a superb journalist and reporter. Nobody has described the experience of this kind of warfare of 1914-1918, better than it is done here.”
”Homage to Catalonia is a triumph…Frederick Davidson makes a fine reader. He sounds convincingly as Orwell might have sounded, even to the occasional use of French-accented Spanish pronunciation…Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
“For a firsthand account of the Spanish Civil War, turn to George Orwell’s memoir about his six months serving on the militia…That he could have written so objective a book so soon after his almost fatal involvement in the war itself and in the partisan conflict seems miraculous.”
“Clear-eyed and unflinching…At once history and a moral and imaginative experience.”
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