Homage to Catalonia

'If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered: "To fight against Fascism," and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered: "Common decency. "' Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's account of the Spanish Civil War. It was the last and most mature of Orwell's documentary books and it is a sharp, focused and angry account of the fighting in Spain. The discomforts of trench warfare, his near-death experience of being shot, and his painful and disorientating medical treatment all contribute to the book's gripping immediacy. At the same time, Orwell was aware that he was producing a work of art: 'Beware of my partisanship,' he warns his readers, 'my mistakes of fact, and the distortion inevitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events. ' Lisa Mullen's introduction examines how the book straddles the divide between literature and history, and provides readers and students with a concise explanatory account of the controversies which have grown up around the book since its publication.