Welcome back to Book Break! In this video we are going to do a deep dive into George
Orwell's novels, but before I get into the video I just wanted to let you know that we are hosting
a giveaway of this complete George Orwell collection. It's absolutely gorgeous,
look at all these themed covers! They've all got matching backs as well with George Orwell's face.
The giveaway is going to be hosted on our Instagram @bookbreakuk, I will put the link in
the description box below, so go over there to see all the details for how you can win all of these
books. So on with the video! When you think George Orwell you probably think these two books:
1984 and Animal Farm. These are both powerful political novels. 1984 is a dystopian novel about
a totalitarian state where even citizens’ thoughts are policed. And Animal Farm is an allegory meant
to represent the early years of the Soviet Union. It's about an uprising on a farm that
leads to even more corruption. I've actually talked a bit more about both of these books in
a video we made on classics that predicted the future, because both of these novels turned out
to be eerily prescient, so I'm assuming you knew about these novels. Both brilliant books, both
very very famous. But did you know about these? In this video I'm going to talk you through some of
Orwell's less famous books that still display just as much of the political passion that has made his
two most famous books so beloved. His debut book was Down and Out in Paris and London. So this
came out when the policeman Eric Blair decided to give up his post and become an investigative
journalist, and publish his memoirs under the pen name George Orwell. He was just 29 when he wrote
this, and a lot of the stories in here reveal him to be so full of compassion for the poorest and
most downtrodden people in society. George Orwell himself is actually an old Etonian and this debut
book shows his attempt to cast off his privilege and empathize with people much less fortunate than
him. And then Burmese Days was his first novel. So this draws on the five years that George Orwell,
or Eric Blair, spent stationed in Burma with the Indian Imperial Police. And George Orwell really
struggled with guilt at his own complicity in this tyrannical regime, and similarly the protagonist
of this novel jJohn Flory is painfully aware of the own part that he plays in a corrupt system,
but doesn't know how to escape it. And it is a harsh portrayal of colonialism. And Orwell
himself said that this is the type of novel he had always seen himself writing, saying “I wanted
to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of purple passages in which my words
were used partly for the sake of their sound”. And he thinks that this hit a lot of those qualities.
Then The Road to Wigan Pier was Orwell's first book to have sold in significant numbers. It's
non-fiction, it outlines his argument in favour of socialism, and questioning British attitudes to
socialism. So in here he describes his own middle class upbringing and talks about the development
of his political conscience. And he also explains in here why so many people who would benefit from
socialism and should support it are still likely to be opposed to it. So it's still a very very
relevant book. Homage to Catalonia is Orwell's personal account of the Spanish civil war,
which Orwell said was the defining moment in his political outlook, and the reason that every book
he wrote since the war was against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism. At the time it was
pretty controversial for exposing the ugly truth about divisions within Spain's anti-fascist left,
but it has since become the most widely read book about the Spanish civil war. And the book is a
mixture of Orwell's trademark astute political observations with his own anecdotes, some tragic,
some comic, about his experiences. And Orwell was a prolific journalist so the final book I'm
going to show you is Orwell and England, which is a collection of his essays. It includes the
essay England Your England which is Orwell's insights into English identity, which he wrote
during the Blitz when he was afraid of what the fate of England might be. And all of the essays
in this collection are full of Orwell's acute observations of the country where he lived. He
talks about everything from food and the weather to a total dissection of nationalism. So again
so much of what's in this book continues to be really really relevant today. So overall a pretty
incredible guy, and remember if you want your chance to win all of these books I will put the
link in the description box below to our post over on Instagram @bookbreakuk where you can enter for
your chance to win the full set. And I will link here to the video I mentioned earlier on classics
that predicted the future, you will spot a couple of George Orwell books in there, and I would love
to know your thoughts on George Orwell. Which of these are your favorites? See you next time!