Orwell as understood by East-Europeans

Abstract

In her article “Orwell as understood by East Europeans” Viorella Manolache discusses the relationship that East Europeans maintain with the works of George Orwell, being interested in the context and the dynamics of perception, in the effect that Panait Istrati’s 1930s preface had upon the reception of Orwell as a beginning writer, as well as the delayed, lethargic and atonic recognition Eastern Europe bestowed upon the discovery of Orwellian works. “A reading for the initiated” (Czeslaw Milosz) or a dangerous preference for readers “keen on dissident and contesting literature” (Vladimir Tismăneanu), Orwell is studied in depth in the post-1991 Romanian cultural space. Détente is configured here by Timothy Garton Ash and Ralf Dahrendorf, through a recourse to George Orwell as the ideal response offered to Eastern European revolutionary ideals of the 1989 moment.