Orwell's Ghosts

Marking the 75th anniversary of 1984, historian Laura Beers examines George Orwell's ideas and argues that they remain radical and essential today. Orwell spent his career exposing social injustice and political duplicity, pressing readers to confront uncomfortable truths about Western society and politics. Beers points to uncanny parallels between the interwar years and the present, including rising inequality, censorship and challenges to traditional social hierarchies, which make his writing feel newly urgent.

Orwell's Ghosts draws on Orwell's whole body of work: his six novels, three works of nonfiction and his celebrated essays. Beers uses them to ask what "Orwellian" really means and to wrest the term away from political pundits. She considers how his writing on free speech speaks to the spread of "fake news", highlights his sharp critiques of capitalism, and, by contrast, analyses his failure to understand feminism.

The book is a wide-ranging study of how the writings of a man hailed as a champion of truth and freedom can help readers face the crises of modernity.