Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8608 in Books
• Published on: 1980-10-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 232 pages

Amazon.com Review
"I wonder what is the appropriate first action when you come from a country at war and set foot on peaceful soil. Mine was to rush to the tobacco-kiosk and buy as many cigars and cigarettes as I could stuff into my pockets." Most war correspondents observe wars and then tell stories about the battles, the soldiers and the civilians. George Orwell--novelist, journalist, sometime socialist--actually traded his press pass for a uniform and fought against Franco's Fascists in the Spanish Civil War during 1936 and 1937. He put his politics and his formidable conscience to the toughest tests during those days in the trenches in the Catalan section of Spain. Then, after nearly getting killed, he went back to England and wrote a gripping account of his experiences, as well as a complex analysis of the political machinations that led to the defeat of the socialist Republicans and the victory of the Fascists.

From AudioFile
Homage to Catalonia is a triumph. The book lends itself to audio, not just because of Orwell's clear, reflective reporting on the Spanish Civil War, but also because of his superb descriptive powers. The observational passages leave the listener with lasting impressions of Spain and the Spanish character, and indeed the character of the war itself. Frederick Davidson makes a fine reader. He sounds convincingly as Orwell might have sounded, even to the occasional use of French-accented Spanish pronunciation. The audio presentation adds a new dimension to a text which is required reading for any student of the Spanish Civil War. A.D.H. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Review
Autobiographical account by George Orwell of his experience as a volunteer for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, published in 1938. Unlike other foreign intellectual leftists, Orwell and his wife did not join the International Brigade but instead enlisted in the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista; POUM). The book chronicles both his observations of the drudgery of the daily life of a soldier and his disillusionment with political infighting and totalitarianism. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

Customer Reviews

Orwell the Objective
My mother spent a frightful childhood in revolutionary Barcelona near the cathedral "Sagrada Famila"...FAI territory. Orwell's account is extremely close to what my mother recounts. A horrible period of history...the precursor to WWII.

Orwell did not let ideology hamper his account of the facts.

My mother's family were secret members of the Flange who issued false Costa Rican passports. They took one of the french refugee ships mentioned in the book just ahead of the Communist police! The real tragedy of the civil war was the defeat of the center...as in Germany, the loonies prevailed. Orwell was honest about the spanish dilemma.

Orwell re-visited
Homage to Catalonia is Orwell at the zenith of his journalistic style--brutally candid in its description of the battlefield and the politics of the Spanish Civil War in which he participated as a volunteer foot soldier against the military insurgency. The Civil War was, of course, a prelude to WWII and while this is clearly adumbrated in Orwell's vivd descriptions of the antagonists, he could not have anticipated the future conflagration. It is a "must read" not only for those interested in the politics of the conflict but also for anyone desiring a candid insight into the plight of the combatants.

A Supplement and an Obituary
"Homage to Catalonia" has long passed from the shelf for current events to the shelf of primary historical sources. No one can study the Spanish Civil War without encountering it. On that basis, it's a five-star book; all primary sources should get five stars. As a reading experience, it's not without weaknesses, which the earlier review by H. Schneider examines cogently. I refer you to that review.

Today's newspapers (7-11-08) carried extended obituaries for David Smith, who died in Berkeley, CA, at age 95. Mr. Smith was one of the only 30-some veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the volunteer contingent of Americans who joined the republican cause in Spain to stop fascism before World War II. The defeat of the republican forces, due at least partly to their own turmoils as described by Orwell, allowed the dictator Franco to suppress the 20th Century in Spain until his welcome death in 1975. David Smith was wounded in Spain in 1938. He returned to America, settled in New York, and married Sophie Kaplan, a marriage that lasted 59 years. Smith worked as a machinist, a union organizer, and for 18 years as a public school biology teacher in New Rochelle, where he campaigned for school integration.
David Smith and his wife were active Communist Party members in the 1940s and 1950s, but left the party in disillusionment in the early 1960s. He was one of the victims of blacklisting in the McCarthy era. He retired to Vermont in 1977, and then to California two decades later. During his long retirement, Smith was a dedicated campaigner for peace, a familiar personage at anti-war demonstrations, and an active raiser of relief funds for Central American countries hit by civil strife.

I knew David Smith reasonably well. He was a man of sincerity and integrity; I doubt that he ever did anything in his life that failed to meet his standards of conscientious humanity. He meant to do well, and he did what he believed was right. His support for the welfare of working people and for oppressed people everywhere was unwavering. He had no lust for power or fame. Like several other grass-root American Communists I've known, he was above all a decent guy. That he was naive about Stalinist Russia is clear; that he wasn't always right about his positions seems clear also, but who is? But to portray such a person as a menace to free society, an unscrupulous plotter, a pawn in the game of Kremlin masterminds is libel and foolishness, and a self-deception honorable people in America cannot afford.