The 1st article Eric Blair (the future George Orwell) wrote for Henri Barbusse’s communist journal Monde, is not only a window onto the “strange” world of English censorship at the time, but a glimpse into the preoccupations of the author himself. Here, translated back into English from H.J.Salemson’s French translation, as it appeared in print in October 1928.
Panaït Istrati, writer of the French preface to Orwell’s “Down & Out in Paris & London” (La Vache Enragée) died in 1935, a pariah, slandered by the Communists. Orwell died in 1950, also of tuberculosis and at the same age as Istrati.
Guest author Nicolas Ragonneau explores the common ground between the 2 writers & tells of Istrati’s long path to redemption…
In March 1935, days before he died from tuberculosis, the Romanian writer Panaït Istrati penned the preface to the French edition of George Orwell’s first book. In translation, Down and Out in Paris and London became La Vache Enragée, a title taken from the 18th-century expression that describes a level of destitution so great that the poor are forced to eat meat from diseased cows.