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Summary: Marvelous writing, important topics
Review: In this gripping book, you find some of the best reportage about the Spanish Civil War and you get some of the most engaging descriptions of anarchist and communal living. People always complain about the part of the book which emphasizes party politics in Spain, and you can easily skip that--or, you can peer into a seminal experience for Orwell. His frustrations with the Stalin-supported Spanish communists drove him to write 1984 and Animal Farm. Orwell is better known for these anti-communist writings and less so for his own socialist creed and deep compassion for the poor. Homage to Catalonia captures both his admiration of the working classes and his abject fear of communism. For the writing, for the vision of collectivism, for the war journalism, for the eyewitness accounts of crucial history, and for many more reasons, this book should be a part of everyone's library.
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Summary: A great introduction
Review: For someone interested in reading a short, concise eyewitness account of the Spanish Civil War, Orwell's book is a good place to start. While some of the political parties and machinations may be a bit confusing to a novice, Orwell writes in a great, novelistic style that vividly conveys time, place, and atmosphere. It's a good launch pad for further study.
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Summary: The book that's influenced me the most
Review: The other week, a Seattle bookstore celebrating its 100th anniversary asked me to pick a favorite book to read at their celebration. I thought about five seconds and picked Homage to Catalonia. It's about the Spanish Civil War, which few of us still remember. More importantly, it's about human courage and idealism, and the struggle to make a better world. Orwell's unblinking in his vision. He's scathing toward the Communist apparatchiks who'd rather maintain control of their sectors than win the war against Franco. But he's generous-spirited to all the ordinary volunteers who served on the Republican side--to people who sacrificed for a sense of justice and human dignity. He also gives a glimpse of a world that might be possible--a world of human dignity and mutual aid. Later his vision got darker, even bitter. I read Animal Farm, for all its power, and don't see much hope. But Catalonia, without soft-pedaling any of the downside, embodies that hope in every page--in the portraits of human courage and aspiration. You read it and it makes you want to act. Orwell couldn't have anticipated it, but his same Spanish soil later nurtured a wonderful workers coop called Mondragon. Started in darkest days of Franco by a Spanish priest who'd fought with the Republicans, it now employs 23,000 worker-owners, and has $4 billion of annual exports. So the dream Orwell glimpsed wasn't entirely a mirage after all.
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Summary: Seminal Orwell
Review: Homage to Catalonia may be the most important book I ever read. Important because it is the book that inspired me to become a journalist, a writer and a teacher. On the surface, this book is a reportage of the Spanish Civil War. It deals, of course, with the politics, some of the military strategy, and the deep social divisions of the period. More importantly, however, it is the story of how an idealistic, naive, but brilliant man discovered personal truths about war, politics and humanity. As a history of the Spanish Civil War, it is probably suspect. Orwell was isolated in Catalonia, affiliated with the POUM, a far-left revolutionary Marxist party led by Andres Nin [not Durutti who was, in fact, commander of the Anarchist CNT's militia], and a foreigner. He didn't see enough of the war to write its definitive history. However, that's not the task Orwell sets for himself. Rather, this is a chronicle of idealistic young men and women in dark times. It is a tale of the promise of revolution and its betrayal by power. Homage to Catalonia is a story of deep humanity about the dignity of man, home, and disillusionment. It is a great book.
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Summary: Entertaining, if partisan, view of Spanish Civil War
Review: The Spanish Civil War (1936-39) was a complicated and brutal affair which history sometimes reduces to a simple conflict between Right and Left. In reality both sides were politically diverse and fractious; but where the idealogues of the Nationalists (Right) largely suppressed their differences to fight the war, the Republicans (Left) never quite succeeded in doing so. This is one of several explanations of the Nationalist victory; the Republicans controlled all of Spain, most of the Spanish Army and all the Navy at the beginning of the war. This book should be read in conjunction with more balanced works on the conflict. George Orwell, later famous for his novels "Animal Farm" and "1984", was a bit of a crank, an uncompromising social critic and a Socialist. He and his wife went to Spain early in the war and joined Spain's largest left-wing political party, the Anarchist POUM led by Durruti. This was a violent radical-Left party much distrusted by both the Spanish moderates and Catalonian Nationalists, the latter the major political force in NE Spain. POUM forces were less disciplined than the rest of the Republican forces, and tended to pursue their own strategic ideas. In addition they were (correctly!) viewed as the bitter rival of the Spanish Communists, whose star was in the ascendant owing to the (costly!) support Stalin was selling the Republican government. Durruti was killed in the fighting in Madrid at the end of 1936; POUM loyalists claimed he was assassinated at the behest of the other Republican factions. The result was a civil-war-within-a -civil-war that is the book's theme. This MAY be the story that Orwell's later works are founded on - disillusionment, not with politics or Socialism in general but specifically with totalitarian Communism. Orwell liked to look on the dark side generally and was fairly oblivious to the generally anti-Left impact of his later works.
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Summary: one of the best descriptive accounts of politics & war
Review: this book had an profound impact on my political views. already being tilted towards anarchism and anarchosyndicalism after having read ursula k leguin's "the dispossessed" and the works of kropotkin, bakunin and so on, homage to catalonia was one of the reasons that made me cross the border to the political field where i can proudly call myself an anarchist. orwell tells the tale of his days of fighting with the POUM and the CNT-FAI against both "the brown fascists" and "the red fascists" and makes this book powerful enough to earn a 5 star from me.
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Summary: An interesting first-hand adventure
Review: Orwell's very satisfying account of his days as a Trotskyist dogface offers much insight into the Spanish Civil War. The heart of politics is crossed with the everday life as a volunteer soldier in someone else's war. Orwell, the committed socialist, finds much disillusionment in Stalinist Communism and explains its danger quite thoroughy. The Spanish Civil-War was a seminal act in the course of the 20th Century. A must read for any political officiando.
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Summary: wonderful book
Review: It's a bit embarassing at times to admit to being a fan of Orwell. One fears that upon telling a fellow reader this that they will assume you have read 1984 a dozen times and think Animal Farm is profound. But it's books like Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Down and Out in Paris and London which have made me a huge Orwell fan. Homage to Catalonia is high up on that list also. I did enjoy Orwell's thoughts on the politics of the war. But what stood out most for me was the human account of the fighting. Very few books have had had anecdotes which were so evocative and continue to stand out in my mind months after reading. The buttered toast story was priceless, as was Orwell's account of his unwillingness to shoot a man trying to get his pants on. I'm not sure if anyone would agree, but I find some parallels between Orwell's books and John Steinbeck's: the same deceivingly simplistic style, coupled with incisive comments and a genuine compassion for people. Homage to Catalonia is a great read both as literature and history.
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Summary: probably Orwell's most important book
Review: Although the book published the year before this one, _The Road to Wigan Pier_, is a more in-depth gauge of Orwell's politics, I still feel closer to _Homage to Catalonia_, a truly fascinating account of his months in the Spanish Civil War and an unwitting allegory for right vs. left, freedom vs. slavery, and other "big ideas." It was with this book that I realized that Orwell was more than the apparently cynical curmudgeon who wrote _Animal Farm_ and _1984_. In fact, he was even more than an important political thinker. In all his writings, but especially _Homage to Catalonia_, one gets a sense of complete honesty and decency, completely unfeigned, that is impossible not to admire. His unflinching portrayal of all that was good and bad in revolutionary Spain makes this book one of those rare documents that can give you a slightly different way of looking a the world. I don't mean a conversion to radical socialism, but a sense that there is genuine wisdom in Orwell's uncomplicated, sincere way of looking at the world. His style, for me, disarms the most clever intellectual sophistry of those who are really nothing more than overeducated windbags. I don't always agree with Orwell, and I don't think he was by any mans the smartest Brit of the century. But I always admire what he says, and the way he says it, right or wrong. In a word: invaluable.
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Summary: An appealing perspective for a socialist view
Review: This part of history told and lived by George Orwell tells of the fascinating Spanish civil war (revolution) of 1936-1937. As As this post-reporter literally dives into the trenches he comes out the dispute with remarkable experiences as well as ideologies. It tells of how the generals of the P.O.U.M. and Alliances disregard titles such as sir and captian with titles such as brother and friend. It portrays a real sence of equality and respect amongst the loyalists. After reading this, one may find democratic socialism or even pure socialism tempting. Unfortunatly it is a dream that died with the war, or did it? The fascists won with Franco but Orwell's views live on in his literature. A great political read!
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