George Orwell remains an iconic figure today - even though he died in 1950. His dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four depicts a Big Brother society in which the state intrudes into the most intimate details of people’s lives - and, not surprisingly, it became a constant reference point after Edward Snowden’s revelations. The word Orwellian is constantly in the media - used either as a pejorative adjective to evoke totalitarian terror or as a complimentary adjective to mean displaying outspoken intellectual honesty . Interest in Orwell’s life and writings - globally - continues unabated. Beginning with a preface by Richard Blair, Orwell’s son, George Orwell Now! brings together thirteen chapters by leading international scholars in four thematic sections: * Peter Marks on Orwell and the history of surveillance studies; Florian Zollmann on Nineteen Eighty-Four in 2014; Henk Vynckier on Orwell’s collecting project; and Adam Stock on ‘Big Brother’s Literary Offspring’ * Paul Anderson In Defence of Bernard Crick ; Luke Seaber on the London Section of Down and Out in Paris and London ; John Newsinger on Orwell’s Socialism ; and Philip Bounds on Orwell and the Anti-Austerity Left in Britain
* Marina Remy on the Writing of Otherness in Burmese Days and Keep the Aspidistra Flying ; Sreya Mallika Datta and Utsa Mukherjee on Reassessing Ambivalence in Orwell’s Burma ; and Shu-chu Wei on Orwell’s Animal Farm alongside Chen Jo-his’s Mayor Yin * Tim Crook on Orwell and the Radio Imagination ; and editor Richard Lance Keeble on Orwell and the War Reporter’s Imagination
Peter Stansky, in an afterword, argues that Orwell is now more relevant than ever before.