Description
Book SynopsisGeorge Orwell remains an iconic figure today even though he died in 1950. His dystopian novel
Nineteen Eighty-Four depicts a Big Brother society in which the state intrudes into the most intimate details of people's lives and, not surprisingly, it became a constant reference point after Edward Snowden's revelations. The word Orwellian is constantly in the media used either as a pejorative adjective to evoke totalitarian terror or as a complimentary adjective to mean displaying outspoken intellectual honesty. Interest in Orwell's life and writings globally continues unabated.
Beginning with a preface by Richard Blair, Orwell's son,
George Orwell Now! brings together thirteen chapters by leading international scholars in four thematic sections:
Peter Marks on Orwell and the history of surveillance studies; Florian Zollmann on
Nineteen Eighty-Four in 2014; Henk Vynckier on Orwell's collecting project; and Adam Stock on Big Brother's Literary Offspring'
Table of ContentsContents: Richard Blair: An In-Depth Look into Orwell’s Complex Mind – Richard Lance Keeble: Orwell Now: Nothing Less Than a Cultural Icon – Peter Marks: George Orwell and the History of Surveillance Studies – Florian Zollmann: Nineteen Eighty-Four in 2014: Power, Militarism and Surveillance in Western Democracies – Henk Vynckier: A Portrait of the Artist as a Collector: Tracing Orwell’s Collecting Project from Burma to Big Brother – Adam Stock: Little Nephews: Big Brother’s Literary Offspring – Paul Anderson: In Defence of Bernard Crick – Luke Seaber: Trust the Teller and Not the Tale: Reflections on Orwell’s Hidden Rhetoric of Truthfulness in the London Section of Down and Out in Paris and London – John Newsinger: Orwell’s Socialism – Philip Bounds: Sectarians on Wigan Pier: George Orwell and the Anti-Austerity Left in Britain – Marina Remy: First Encounters and the Writing of Otherness in Burmese Days and Keep the Aspidistra Flying – Sreya Mallika Datta/Utsa Mukherjee: «Pukka Sahibs» and «Yellow Faces»: Reassessing Ambivalence in Orwell’s Burma – Shu-chu Wei: Critiquing Communist Dictatorship East and West: George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Chen Jo-hsi’s Mayor Yin – Tim Crook: George Orwell and the Radio Imagination – Richard Lance Keeble: Orwell and the War Reporter’s Imagination – Peter Stansky: Why Orwell Is More Relevant Today Than Ever Before.
