Dr Orwell and Mr Blair

By David Caute

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1857992121
• ISBN13: 9781857992120
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Phoenix/Orion Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Orwellians - Find this Book

I had never heard of the author or the book when I picked up a British edition at a used bookstore. I had hoped that anyone writing a novel on Orwell would possess Orwell's virtues of directness, frankness, and lucidity while offering up some ideas. Caute succeeds on all fronts, and in some matters of technique he is clearly Orwell's superior. He also has a sense of humor and his characters - including Orwell himself - are more nuanced than any Orwell character.The book's story is about Orwell researching Animal Farm. He finds the book's narrator - a boy named Alex - hanging on at the family farm after his Mum and Dad have both abandoned it. There are pigs and other animals whose names will be familiar to the reader. Alex fills us in on his contributions to both Animal Farm and 1984 and his continuing relationship with Orwell. The last page of Alex's narrative contains a surprise which is perhaps intended to show that - as Orwell says in the novel - Orwell is often wrong.Caute himself has written 8 other novels and 10 non-fiction books, including several on the left, communism and fellow travellers.