Rebecca Solnit in conversation with Adam Hochschild on her new book Orwell’s Roses

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.

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books including  Call Them By Their True Names (Winner of the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction), Men Explain Things to Me, and A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster.

Adam Hochschild is an American author, journalist, historian and lecturer whose books include King Leopold’s Ghost, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, and Spain in Our Hearts.