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D.J. Taylor

Since its publication nearly seventy years ago, George Orwell’s 1984 has been regarded as one of the most influential novels of the modern age. Politicians have testified to its influence on their intellectual identities, rock musicians have made records about it, TV viewers watch a reality show named for it, and a White House spokesperson tells of “alternative facts.” The world we live in is often described as an Orwellian one, awash in inescapable surveillance and invasions of privacy. On 1984 dives deep into Orwell’s life to chart his earlier writings and key moments in his youth, such as his years at a boarding school that’s strict and charismatic headmaster shaped the idea of Big Brother. Taylor tells the story of the writing of the book, taking listeners to the Scottish island of Jura, where Orwell, newly famous thanks to Animal Farm but coping with personal tragedy and rapidly declining health, struggled to finish 1984. Published during the cold war—a term Orwell coined—Taylor elucidates the environmental influences on the book. Then he examines 1984’s post-publication life, including its role as a tool to understand our language, politics, and government.

Charles Armstrong

Dreamscape Media

Books About Books

On Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Story of George Orwell's Masterpiece

Salamishah Tillet

Alice Walker made history in 1982 when she became the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, both for The Color Purple. Published in the Reagan Era amid a severe backlash to civil rights, the jazz-age novel tells the story of an African-American woman haunted by domestic and sexual violence.

Prominent academic and activist Salamishah Tillet combines cultural criticism, history, and memoir to explore Walker’s epistolary novel, showing how it has influenced and been informed by the zeitgeist of the time. The Color Purple received both praise and criticism upon publication, and the conversation it sparked around race and gender still continues today. It has been adapted for an Oscar-nominated film and a hit Broadway musical. 

Through interviews with Walker, Oprah Winfrey, Quincy Jones, and others, as well as archival research, Tillet studies Walker’s life and the origins of her subjects, including violence, sexuality, gender, and politics. Reading The Color Purple at age fifteen was a groundbreaking experience for Tillet. It continues to resonate with her—as a sexual-violence survivor, as a teacher of the novel, and as an accomplished academic. Provocative and personal, In Search of the Color Purple is a bold work from an important public intellectual.

Adenrele Ojo

In Search of the Color Purple: The Story of Alice Walker’s Masterpiece