SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 'I loved this book... An exhilarating romp through
Orwell's life and times' Margaret Atwood 'Outside my work the thing I care most about is
gardening' George Orwell In 1936 Orwell planted roses at his cottage in Hertfordshire. Over
eighty years later Rebecca Solnit encounters them and is inspired to explore a different side
to the great writer and activist to the one we know so well. Following his journey from the
coal mines of England to taking up arms in the Spanish Civil War and his explosive critiques
of Stalin and authoritarianism here Solnit finds a more hopeful Orwell. And in her dialogue
with the author and his fascination with nature she makes unexpected connections with the
colonial legacy of the flower garden discovers photographer Tina Modotti's extraordinary roses
and reveals Stalin's strange obsession with growing lemons in impossibly cold conditions. A
fresh reading of a towering figure of the twentieth century Orwell's Roses finds solace and
solutions for the political and environmental challenges we face today and is a remarkable
reflection on pleasure beauty and joy as acts of resistance. 'Luminous...It is
efflorescent a study that seeds and blooms propagates thoughts and tends to historical
associations' New Statesman 'A genuinely extraordinary mind whose curiosity intelligence
and willingness to learn seem unbounded' Irish Times
