I’ve just published a new episode of my Reading Orwell podcast, this one featuring an interview with Dr David Dwan (University of Oxford) about his 2021 edition of Animal Farm (1945) for Oxford World’s Classics. In our conversation we cover a range of issues, many of them converging on the fact that Orwell’s novella, and his writing more broadly, is often characterized by ambiguity and self-contradiction, especially around such political principles as liberty, tolerance, and freedom. David is also the author of the superb Liberty, Equality, and Humbug: Orwell’s Political Ideals (2018).
Japanese Translation of Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four
Today’s news is that a Japanese translation is in the works of The Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four (2020), which I edited for Cambridge University Press. It should appear within a couple of years. Exciting! Japanese isn’t a language I ‘have’, as they say, so the translation will only ever be a book I can admire without actually reading—but, all the same, it’s a pretty cool prospect.