A lush exploration of roses, pleasure, and politics, and a fresh
take on George Orwell as an avid gardener whose political writing was
grounded in his passion for the natural world
"In the year
1936 a writer planted roses." So begins Rebecca Solnit's new
book, a reflection on George Orwell's passionate gardening and the
way that his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, and the
natural world illuminates his other commitments as a writer and
antifascist, and the intertwined politics of nature and power.
Sparked by her
unexpected encounter with the surviving roses he planted in 1936,
Solnit's account of this understudied aspect of Orwell's life
explores his writing and his actions--from going deep into the coal
mines of England, fighting in the Spanish Civil War, critiquing
Stalin when much of the international left still supported him (and
then critiquing that left), to his analysis of the relationship
between lies and authoritarianism. Through Solnit's celebrated
ability to draw unexpected connections, readers encounter the
photographer Tina Modotti's roses and her Stalinism, Stalin's
obsession with forcing lemons to grow in impossibly cold conditions,
Orwell's slave-owning ancestors in Jamaica, Jamaica Kincaid's
critique of colonialism and imperialism in the flower garden, and the
brutal rose industry in Colombia that supplies the American market.
The book draws to a close with a rereading of Nineteen Eighty-Four
that completes her portrait of a more hopeful Orwell, as well as a
reflection on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of resistance.