a British writer and journalist who wrote books about politics and who also wrote novels. His real name was Eric Blair. His books Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four are both about political systems in which ordinary people have no power, and are completely controlled by the government. Both novels have had a great influence on the way people think about and write about politics, and political systems like those described in the books are sometimes called Orwellian. Orwell fought on the Republican (=left wing) side in the Spanish Civil War (1903-1950). orig. Eric Arthur Blair born 1903, Motihari, Bengal, India died Jan. 21, 1950, London, Eng. British novelist, essayist, and critic. Instead of accepting a scholarship to a university, Orwell went to Burma to serve in the Indian Imperial Police (1922-27), an experience that changed him into a literary and political rebel. On returning to Europe, he lived in self-imposed poverty, gaining material for Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), and became a socialist. He went to Spain to report on the Spanish Civil War and stayed to join the Republican militia. His war experiences, which gave him a lifelong dread of communism (he would later provide British intelligence services with lists of his fellow British communists), are recounted in Homage to Catalonia (1938). His novels typically portray a sensitive, conscientious, emotionally isolated individual at odds with an oppressive or dishonest social environment. His most famous works are the anti-Soviet satirical fable Animal Farm (1945), and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) a dystopic vision of totalitarianism whose influence was widely felt in the postwar decades. His literary essays are also admired
(Edebiyat) Of, relating to, or evocative of the works of George Orwell, especially the satirical novel 1984, which depicts a futuristic totalitarian state
Frightening and overcontrolled by a government that interferes in nearly every aspect of personal life; example: Biometric devices like eye-scanners allow an Orwellian level of government knowledge about everyone’s location