{"product_id":"9780547417769","title":"Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays","description":"\u003cb\u003eEssays by the author of \u003ci\u003e1984\u003c\/i\u003e on topics from “remembrances of working in a bookshop [to] recollections of fighting in the Spanish Civil War” (\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e George Orwell was first and foremost an essayist, producing throughout his life an extraordinary array of short nonfiction that reflected—and illuminated—the fraught times in which he lived. “As soon as he began to write something,” comments George Packer in his foreword, “it was as natural for Orwell to propose, generalize, qualify, argue, judge—in short, to think—as it was for Yeats to versify or Dickens to invent.”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eFacing Unpleasant Facts\u003c\/i\u003e charts Orwell’s development as a master of the narrative-essay form and unites such classics as “Shooting an Elephant” with lesser-known journalism and passages from his wartime diary. Whether detailing the horrors of Orwell’s boyhood in an English boarding school or bringing to life the sights, sounds, and smells of the Spanish Civil War, these essays weave together the personal and the political in an unmistakable style that is at once plainspoken and brilliantly complex.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Best known for his late-career classics \u003ci\u003eAnimal Farm\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003e1984\u003c\/i\u003e, George Orwell—who used his given name, Eric Blair, in the earliest pieces of this collection aimed at the aficionado as well as the general reader—was above all a polemicist of the first rank. Organized chronologically, from 1931 through the late 1940s, these in-your-face writings showcase the power of this literary form.” —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review","brand":"Houghton Mifflin Harcourt","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47107136782576,"sku":"9780547417769","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780547417769_p0.jpg?v=1769915879","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780547417769","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}