Orwell's Roses
-
- $20.99
Publisher Description
Roses, pleasure, and politics: a fresh take on Orwell as an avid gardener, whose political writing was grounded in his passion for the natural world.
'Outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening' wrote George Orwell in 1940. Inspired by her encounter with the surviving roses that Orwell planted in his cottage in Hertfordshire, Rebecca Solnit explores how his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and the intertwined politics of nature and power.
Following his journey from the coal mines of England to taking up arms in the Spanish Civil War; from his prescient critique of Stalin to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism, Solnit encounters a more hopeful Orwell, whose love of nature pulses through his work and actions. And in her dialogue with the author, she makes fascinating forays into colonial legacies in the flower garden, discovers photographer Tina Modotti's roses, reveals Stalin's obsession with growing lemons in impossibly cold conditions, and exposes the brutal rose industry in Colombia.
A fresh reading of a towering figure of the 20th century which finds solace and solutions for the political and environmental challenges we face today, Orwell's Roses is a remarkable reflection on pleasure, beauty and joy as acts of resistance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Solnit carefully charts the life of George Orwell (1903–1950) by focusing on his love of roses and all things natural in this brilliant survey (after Recollections of My Nonexistence). Her study of the "sublimely gifted essayist" and novelist is not a biography, she notes, rather "a series of forays from one starting point, that gesture whereby one writer planted several roses." After reading an essay in which Orwell expounds upon the power of trees, Solnit begins to see his writing differently, spotting more "enjoyment" in his work. She follows Orwell's "episodic" life from his birth in northern India to coal mines in England, to Spain, and through his marriages, but begins with and returns often to his midlife in Wallington, England, where he rented a cottage in 1936 and planted his roses. She also traces her own interests that mirror his, such as climate, class, and politics—Orwell wrote "about toads and spring but also about principles and values and arguing with an orthodoxy." A disquisition on the suffragists' song "Bread and Roses" and a look at the rose trade in Bogotá happen along the way, but Solnit never loses sight of Orwell and his relationship to nature: "Outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening," he wrote. Fans of Marta MacDowell's biographies of gardening writers will appreciate this lyrical exploration.
