This is the story of the marriage behind some of the most famous literary works of the 20th century —and a probing consideration of what it means to be a wife and a writer in the modern world.
At the end of summer 2017, Anna Funder found herself at a moment of peak overload. Family obligations and household responsibilities were crushing her soul and taking her away from her wr...
This is the story of the marriage behind some of the most famous literary works of the 20th century —and a probing consideration of what it means to be a wife and a writer in the modern world.
At the end of summer 2017, Anna Funder found herself at a moment of peak overload. Family obligations and household responsibilities were crushing her soul and taking her away from her writing deadlines. She needed help, and George Orwell came to her rescue.
"I’ve always loved Orwell," Funder writes, "his self-deprecating humour, his laser vision about how power works, and who it works on." So after rereading and savoring books Orwell had written, she devoured six major biographies tracing his life and work. But then she read about his forgotten wife, and it was a revelation.
Eileen O’Shaughnessy married Orwell in 1936. O’Shaughnessy was a writer herself, and her literary brilliance not only shaped Orwell’s work, but her practical common sense saved his life. But why and how, Funder wondered, was she written out of their story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder re-creates the Orwells’ marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War in London. As she peeks behind the curtain of Orwell’s private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer—and what it is to be a wife.
A breathtakingly intimate view of one of the most important literary marriages of the twentieth century, Wifedom speaks to our present moment as much as it illuminates the past. Genre-bending and utterly original, it is an ode to the unsung work of women everywhere.
作者简介
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ANNA FUNDER is the author of Stasiland and All That I Am, and the novella The Girl with the Dogs. Stasiland, hailed as a ‘classic’, tells true stories of ordinary people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of others who worked for the Stasi. In 2004 Stasiland won the UK’s premier award for non-fiction, the Samuel Johnson Prize, and was a fina...
ANNA FUNDER is the author of Stasiland and All That I Am, and the novella The Girl with the Dogs. Stasiland, hailed as a ‘classic’, tells true stories of ordinary people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of others who worked for the Stasi. In 2004 Stasiland won the UK’s premier award for non-fiction, the Samuel Johnson Prize, and was a finalist for many other awards. Anna’s novel All That I Am is an homage to four German anti-Hitler activists living bravely but precariously in exile in London in the 1930s. All That I Am won many literary awards including Australia’s most prestigious, the Miles Franklin Prize, and was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. It spent over a year on the bestseller lists, was BBC Book of the Week and Book at Bedtime, and The Times Book of the Month. Both books are international best sellers, published in over twenty-four countries. Originally trained as an international human rights lawyer, Anna is a former DAAD Fellow in Berlin, Australia Council Fellow, and Rockefeller Foundation Fellow. She has lived in Paris, Berlin, and Brooklyn, and now lives in Sydney, Australia.
这本书讲述了Eileen, George Orwell's wife 不被看见的一生,这位写出《1984》、《动物农场》的伟大作家把妻子的身影隐藏于自己的笔下,近乎“残暴”地对待生命里出现的各种女性,对他来说,wife是一种职业,it's a job vacancy. 他需要有人替他整理书稿、处理家务、买菜做饭、...
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20 有用 秦桑低绿枝 2024-07-26 11:16:00 加拿大
在被动语态里被抹去的妻子们。
3 有用 dawnfirefly 2024-06-23 21:53:02 中国香港
渣男!虽然理解作者的出发点,但文字主观性太强,反而给可信度打了折扣,有些可惜。
6 有用 奥利奥闯关记 2024-04-06 14:39:14 澳大利亚
最近才读完动物农场,前面有个好老长的序确实没有半句提过Elieen
2 有用 春山去 2024-11-04 18:26:43 贵州
失望,看得出作者为了这本书花费了很多心血,视角选得也很有价值,但是真的太啰嗦了,写了一堆并没有对她的选题作出贡献的流水账内容,前半段和女儿的对话还算有意思呼应主题,后面大多数叙述称得上又臭又长,事无巨细到还以为在看奥威尔和艾琳的皇帝后妃起居录,折损了论述的说服力不说,至少阅读感受就非常差,恨不得自己动笔给她精简点,哪怕是语言不要那么繁琐。😅果然有的书就活在概括精华长微博里就够了。
1 有用 francesfinnn 2024-09-01 08:36:47 北京
She deserve more