LEADER 00000nam  22003731i 4500 
001    sky304710727 
003    SKY 
005    20220302095042.0 
008    211018s2021    nyua     b    001 0beng   
020    9780593083369|q(hardcover) 
020    0593083369|q(hardcover) 
040    |dSKYRV|erda|dUtOrBLW 
092    BIO|bORW 
100 1  Solnit, Rebecca,|eauthor. 
245 10 Orwell's roses /|cRebecca Solnit. 
263    2110 
264  1 New York :|bViking,|c[2021] 
300    308 pages :|billustrations ;|c22 cm 
336    text|btxt|2rdacontent 
337    unmediated|bn|2rdamedia 
338    volume|bnc|2rdacarrier 
504    Includes bibliographical references and index. 
505 0  I: The prophet and the hedgehog -- II: Going underground -
       - III: Bread and roses -- IV: Stalin's lemons -- V: 
       Retreats and attacks -- VI: The price of roses -- VII: The
       river Orwell. 
520    "A fresh take on George Orwell as a far more nature-loving
       figure than is often portrayed, and a dazzlingly rich 
       meditation on roses, gardens, and the value and use of 
       beauty and pleasure in the face of brutality and horror. 
       "In the spring of 1936 a man planted roses." That man was 
       George Orwell, shortly before he went off to fight against
       fascism in Spain. Today, those rosebushes are still 
       thriving. This is the starting point for Rebecca Solnit's 
       new book, which presents another side of Orwell, a 
       neglected arcadian Orwell who took enormous pleasure in 
       the natural world and found great meaning and value in it.
       Orwell's planting of the roses is an axle from which 
       Solnit's chapters radiate out like spokes as she 
       brilliantly explores its various contexts, perspectives, 
       and meanings, following the contours of Orwell's life and 
       tracking how deeply enmeshed the love of nature is in all 
       his writing. Journeying to the cottage in Wallingford 
       where Orwell lived in 1936, she examines his desire to be 
       agrarian and settled, how gardening restored him, and how 
       planting something can be an act of fidelity and faith. 
       Probing at the beauty and meaning of roses, she draws in 
       the revolutionary photography and politics of Tina Modotti
       and makes a clandestine visit to a Columbian rose factory,
       where 80% of America's roses for sale are grown. She 
       tracks the history of gardening, showing how the desire to
       garden is culturally determined and often rooted in class,
       recounts the immense battles over breeding and genetics in
       Russia during Stalin's time, and probes into the 
       colonialist roots of Orwell's forebears, who worked in 
       opium production in India and profiteered from sugar and 
       slavery in Jamaica. Solnit shows how these points of 
       intersection illuminate Orwell's work, and how that 
       illumination shines forth on larger questions about beauty,
       pleasure, meaning, relationship, and hope. Her book 
       establishes that "Orwellian" could stand for something 
       more than ominous, corrupt, and sinister"--|cProvided by 
       publisher. 
600 10 Orwell, George,|d1903-1950. 
600 10 Orwell, George,|d1903-1950|xHomes and haunts. 
650  0 Authors, English|y20th century|vBiography. 
650  0 Orwell, George,|d1903-1950|xKnowledge. 
650  0 Roses. 
650  0 Gardening. 
650  0 Nature. 
655  7 Biographies.|2lcgft