George Orwell Now!: Preface by Richard Blair, Son of George Orwell

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.