Customer Reviews
These reviews certainly don't matter - By: Justin, 02 Mar 2007 
Ignore what is painfully obvious. This book is not a diatribe about the folly of the Iraq war, it is a re-evaluation of a much maligned, much misunderstood, frequently hated icon, who after his death was subjected to a tug-of-war competition between the Right & the Left as to who should own him. This short book aims to correct the incessant harping of the 'Orwell was anti-women, anti-Semitic, anti-everything' Brigade. Such criticisms deserve an answer, not an excuse, & they are provided amply in this book. If you reallly do wish to uncover the myth of what some people believe is a well-worn topic, you should definitely give this a read.
A louse on a louse - By: William Podmore, 09 Jun 2003 
One leftie icon idolises another leftie icon. Hitchens, the warmongering writer for rich Americans, has written what can only be described as a hagiography of 'Saint George' Orwell. One witless anti-communist writing about another, Hitchens has nothing new to say; he merely retreads his tired old insults about Orwell's many enemies. Orwell got everything wrong politicallly; he followed every faddish trend, while always posing as independent, above the foolish crowd - it's no surprise that Hitchens, who has always adopted the same superior pose, praises his predecessor. Orwell was old Etonian to the core, anti-women, anti-black, anti-Semitic, anti-working class, anti-trade union. Hitchens, a vicious spokesman for George Bush, used to have a reputation as a radical, but his brother Peter is a far braver, more independent, thinker.
(What's) the Matter with Hitchens - By: , 28 Apr 2003 Christopher Hitchens talks of Orwell in his invited lectures & at the New School in New York where he occasionallly teaches, writes of Orwell in his books, & backs Paul Wolfowitz as a matter of Realpolitik on the second gulf war. One waits in vain to read a piece of his that, knowledgable as he is & not one to turn away from a fight, critiques the Pentagon, an institution that houses Wolfowitz (and many others) & which simply cries out to be critiqued -- & precisely on Orwellian grounds. On this matter Hitchens is no longer an expat critic of the American establishment as he was once hailed to be, he is a yes-sayer. In his silence is a complicit yes to any number of things the Pentagon says & does. This makes not only for bad writing (a gadfly who agrees?), it aligns his current thought with the likes of Kissinger, whom Hitchens saw fit to dispatch with in a book. And rightly so. Hitchens has gone to bed with the Pentagon too uncriticallly, simply because they talk about democracy & wage war against theocracy. I can find no better way than to get my point across regarding Hitchens & the distance that he has placed between himself & this book than to put it thus: Orwell would have disagreed with Hitchens on this one. And that matters.
