news: Orwell

[pynchonoid]

Briton spied on Orwell in Spain 

Surveillance for Soviets during civil war claimed
writer's wife was having affair 

Rob Evans
Monday May 5, 2003
The Guardian 

George Orwell, the writer who savagely attacked the
Big Brother powers of Russian totalitarianism, was
spied on for the Soviet Union by a fellow British
volunteer during the Spanish civil war, a new book
reveals. 

Soviet spymasters snooped on the English writer as he
became involved in rivalry between communists and
Trotskyists. The communists pried into his private
life to record that Orwell's wife was probably having
an affair with one of his comrades. Orwell's attacks
on the corruption of the Russian revolution inflicted
much damage on the reputation of the Soviet leaders. 

The surveillance of Orwell during the Spanish civil
war is revealed in a new biography of the author by
Gordon Bowker, published on Thursday. It was during
this war that Orwell began to loathe communism, which
he satirised in his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen
Eighty-Four. Bowker writes that Orwell's experience in
Spain "ultimately gave birth to his last two great
novels". [...]

continues:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,949615,00.html>

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