Les roses d'Orwell

"In the spring of 1936, a writer planted rose bushes." This is how Rebecca Solnit's new book begins, a reflection on a passionate gardener who was also the most important voice of the 20th century against lies and totalitarianism: George Orwell. Starting from her chance encounter with those roses that Orwell cultivated more than eighty years ago and that are still brimming with life in his garden today, the author investigates that most unknown aspect of the intellectual's life to discover to what extent his devotion to flowers can illuminate your ethical and aesthetic commitments as a writer and as an anti-fascist fighter. With his characteristic ability to establish unexpected connections, Solnit intermingles the life and literary work of the 1984 author, and his link with nature and the world of the senses, with other stories such as the one about the roses by photographer Tina Modotti, the Stalin's obsession with growing lemons in a frigid climate, the Spanish Civil War, Jamaica Kincaid's criticism of colonialism or the rose-growing industry in Colombia. A reflection on pleasure, beauty, language, writing, hope and truth as acts of resistance.