Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell
Homage to Catalonia
Orwell's account of fighting with the POUM militia in the Spanish Civil War (1938): the trenches of the Aragon front, the street fighting in Barcelona in May 1937, his wounding, and the suppression of his party that forced him to flee Spain.
About the book
Published in 1938, Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's account of his months in the Spanish Civil War. He went to Barcelona at the end of 1936, joined the militia of the POUM, a small anti-Stalinist Marxist party, and served in the trenches of the Aragon front until a sniper's bullet passed through his throat. The book describes the revolutionary atmosphere of Barcelona, the cold and boredom of trench warfare, and the street fighting of May 1937, when the Republican side turned on itself. Orwell writes plainly about what he saw and what he could not know, and the suppression of the POUM that followed shaped his lasting distrust of political lies and propaganda.
Characters
The narrator — Orwell himself
An English volunteer who joins a militia in Barcelona to fight fascism.
The Italian militiaman — Volunteer
A young soldier Orwell meets for a moment at the barracks and never forgets.
Georges Kopp — Commander
A Belgian engineer commanding Orwell’s unit on the Aragon front.
Bob Smillie — Fellow volunteer
A young Scot, grandson of a famous miners’ leader, who serves with Orwell.
Orwell’s wife — In Barcelona
Eileen, who works in the Independent Labour Party’s office in Barcelona during the war.
John McNair — ILP representative
The Independent Labour Party’s man in Barcelona, who helps the British volunteers.
About the author
George Orwell (1903–1950) was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, an English novelist and essayist who turned plain, exact prose into a political act. Born in India and schooled at Eton, he served five years in the imperial police in Burma, then lived among the poor of Paris and London, and was shot through the throat fighting Franco's forces in Spain — and each of those became a book. He wanted prose to be "like a window pane", and distrusted any language built to hide what it meant. Animal Farm made him famous; Nineteen Eighty-Four, finished on a Scottish island while tuberculosis was killing him, gave the world Big Brother and doublethink. His work also includes Burmese Days, The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia.