di "Homage to Catalonia" is a novel written by the English author George Orwell and published in 1938.
The novel recounts Orwell's experience on the Spanish front during the civil war.
Orwell is in Spain as a correspondent for the British press, but in 1936 he decides to embrace the cause of the popular front, he strips off the journalist clothes and goes down in the trenches for six months, until a bullet pierces him and is forced to to abandon the companions.
The English author manages to merge a narrative with high lyric tones to a more non-fiction that analyzes the political background or rather the undergrowth of intrigue and interest of which he succeeds in capturing the threads that govern him.
The first half of the work enjoys a strong charge of pathos because the descriptions of the miserable and hard life of trenches are palpable; George chooses to strip his words from the rhetoric, he makes the images speak, the cold crushing the bones, the parasites that eat the meat, the spoiled food, the terror of the snipers of the opposing front.
Orwell has sought this experience voluntarily and what transpires from writing seems to be solidarity and conviction, not the desire to shine like a fearless reporter.
The last chapters of the book are purely political analysis, meticulous and quirky, so as to make the reader perceive a real caesura with respect to the previous narrative body.
An interesting section dedicated mainly to the scholars of the historical examination, because it reveals poorly known background and brings out shadows and different observation points.
The pleasantness of these pages loses ground but the value of the testimony is undoubted.
