Homage to Catalonia

In 1936 George Orwell went to Spain to report on the Civil War. Instead he joined the militia of the P.O.U.M. - Party of Marxist Unification - to fight against the Fascists.

In this now justly famous account of his experience, Orwell describes the bleak and 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 uncompromising effort to sort out the partisan politics that plagued the Republican cause. His analysis of why the Communist Party sabotaged the workers' revolution and branded the P.O.U.M. as Trotskyist provides a key to the outcome of the war and an ironic sidelight on international communism.

ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR (1903-1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist whose best-known works include the dystopian novel 1984 and the satirical novella Animal Farm. He is consistently ranked among the best English writers of the 20th century, and his writing has had a huge, lasting influence on contemporary culture. Several of his coined words have since entered the English language, and the word "Orwellian" is now used to describe totalitarian or authoritarian social practices.

At the time of his death in 1975, Lionel Trilling was University Professor at Columbia University.