Review: Homage To Catalonia by George Orwell

[dickens 100]

This remarkable book is George Orwell's personal account and experiences in the Spanish civil war in 1937
Orwell joined the POUM a left wing workes militia and served on the front for over a hundred days.
His experiences make for a gripping read, the bad organisation, the horrors of the conflict and his own near shocking demise. On the 20th May 1937 Orwell was shot through the throat by a sniper and was lucky to survive. He gives details of his hospital experiences and finally being forced to leave the volatile country.

This is a truly wonderful book. The way he describes the almost amateurish bunch of fighters he is with, the corroded weapons, the sheer boredom and the adundance of rats!, not forgetting his near death experience.
Some of his ideas for his masterpiece 1984, were shaped in this book, like the rounded up of his POUM colleagues, some tortured to death and the mock trials

I will give it 5 out of 5