Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life
Publisher,Viking UK
Publication Date,
Format, Hardcover
Weight,
No. of Pages, 464
Shelf: General Books / Humanities / Biographies / Memoirs
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THE TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
'A marvellous book . . . I just loved it all, and have a permanently marked-up, dog-eared copy on my shelf for the next generation' Tom Hanks
'Furious and fascinating' The Times
*****
Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own . . .
When she uncovers his forgotten wife, it's a revelation. Eileen O'Shaughnessy's literary brilliance shaped Orwell's work and her practical nous saved his life. But why - and how - was she written out of the story?
Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells' marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WWII in London. As she rolls up the screen concealing Orwell's private life, she is led to question what it takes to be a writer - and what it is to be a wife.
*****
'A spellbinding achievement' FT
'Brilliant' Claire Tomalin
'Wonderful, unexpected and exciting' Antonia Fraser
About the Author
Anna Funder is the author of Stasiland and All That I Am, and the novella The Girl with the Dogs. Stasiland, hailed as a 'classic', tells true stories of ordinary people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of others who worked for the Stasi. In 2004 Stasiland won the UK's premier award for non-fiction, the Samuel Johnson Prize, and was a finalist for many other awards. Anna's novel All That I Am is an homage to four German anti-Hitler activists living bravely but precariously in exile in London in the 1930s. All That I Am won many literary awards including Australia's most prestigious, the Miles Franklin Prize, and was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. It spent over a year on the bestseller lists, was BBC Book of the Week and Book at Bedtime, and The Times Book of the Month. Both books are international bestsellers, published in over twenty-four countries.
- Dimensions : 16.2 x 4.1 x 24 cm
