“Before he became a famous allegorist and dystopian writer, Orwell lived a strange life among fascinating characters. These two memoirs chronicle his time among the desperate and grossly poor underclass of three countries: France, England, and Spain. Each acquaintance he makes seems to have been driven mad from deprivation, but Orwell’s writing is witty and makes a comic tableau out of the mad Parisian waiters and ideologically-blind revolutionaries that he encounters. Even while surrounded by poverty or on the front of the Spanish Civil War, the writing is sympathetic, and I find myself jealous of Orwell’s experiences in spite of it all.”—Michael, Grass Roots Books & Music, Corvallis. Buy Homage to Catalonia and Down and Out in Paris and London from Grass Roots Books and Music.

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