Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life

Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life

Funder, Anna

Hardcover

Biographies GeneralLiterary FiguresWomen's Studies

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0593320689
ISBN13: 9780593320686
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: Aug 22 2023
Pages: 464
Weight: 1.81
Height: 1.46 Width: 6.52 Depth: 9.59
Language: English
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR - WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION FINALIST - This is the story of the marriage behind some of the most famous literary works of the 20th century --and a probing consideration of what it means to be a wife and a writer in the modern world

Simply, a masterpiece...Funder not only re-makes the art of biography, she resurrects a woman in full. --Geraldine Brooks, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, author of Horse

At the end of summer 2017, Anna Funder found herself at a moment of peak overload. Family obligations and household responsibilities were crushing her soul and taking her away from her writing deadlines. She needed help, and George Orwell came to her rescue.

I've always loved Orwell, Funder writes, his self-deprecating humour, his laser vision about how power works, and who it works on. So after rereading and savoring books Orwell had written, she devoured six major biographies tracing his life and work. But then she read about his forgotten wife, and it was a revelation.

Eileen O'Shaughnessy married Orwell in 1936. O'Shaughnessy was a writer herself, and her literary brilliance not only shaped Orwell's work, but her practical common sense saved his life. But why and how, Funder wondered, was she written out of their story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder re-creates the Orwells' marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War in London. As she peeks behind the curtain of 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 breathtakingly intimate view of one of the most important literary marriages of the twentieth century, Wifedom speaks to our present moment as much as it illuminates the past. Genre-bending and utterly original, it is an ode to the unsung work of women everywhere.

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