Orwell's Nose
A Pathological Biography
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
In 2012 writer John Sutherland permanently lost his sense of smell. At about the same time, he embarked on a rereading of George Orwell and—still coping with his recent disability—noticed something peculiar: Orwell was positively obsessed with smell. In this original, irreverent biography, Sutherland offers a fresh account of Orwell’s life and works, one that sniffs out a unique, scented trail that wends from Burmese Days through Nineteen Eighty-Four and on to The Road to Wigan Pier.
Sutherland airs out the odors, fetors, stenches, and reeks trapped in the pages of Orwell’s books. From Winston Smith’s apartment in Nineteen Eighty-Four, which “smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats,” to the tantalizing aromas of concubine Ma Hla May’s hair in Burmese Days, with its “mingled scent of sandalwood, garlic, coconut oil, and jasmine,” Sutherland explores the scent narratives that abound in Orwell’s literary world. Along the way, he elucidates questions that have remained unanswered in previous biographies, addressing gaps that have kept the writer elusively from us. In doing so, Sutherland offers an entertaining but enriching look at one of the most important writers of the twentieth century and, moreover, an entirely new and sensuous way to approach literature: nose first.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As the title suggests, this entertaining and scholarly, if somewhat eccentric, biography examines the life and works of George Orwell through the lens of his olfactory preoccupations. Sutherland (A Little History of Literature) lost his sense of smell in 2012, just as he was embarking on his research for this book. One can't help but imagine that this sensory loss primed him to see scent writ bold wherever he looked, but the case he makes for taking this angle is largely convincing. What emerges is a rigorous, rollicking, and at times ribald portrait of the author, from his childhood "born into a class neurotic about sanitation" to the "lower-class smell" of his barracks as a British colonial policeman in Burma and his eventual marriage and purchase of "a grand building, still smelling of oats and horse piss." The text is peppered with references to Orwell's troubling sexual history, which includes one attempted rape; Sutherland suggests plausibly that the smell of parks and greenery triggered Orwell's libido. The overall depiction is diligently researched and scrupulously evenhanded, with the two authors' (perhaps) shared fixation providing a unique scaffolding for a fresh look at a luminary of English letters.
