The Orwell Brigade

Twelve authors have banded together under the Orwell banner:“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”We are part of the George Orwell intellectual legacy, a dozen novelists seeking to carry Orwell’s banner forward.The geographical reach of our essays stretches around the globe. The journey through the essays starts in Orwell’s home, England, and takes you through the Americas, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the edges of Europe.We give our accounts of contemporary social justice issues ranging from social inequality increasingly widened as political institutions become dysfunctional, to persistent racism and discrimination against minorities, to memories ofstate tyranny and war crimes and political thugs at their games of corruption, to intimidation and killings in sectarian strife.Two essays deal directly with George Orwell the writer—his refusal to play the game of colonial empire—and his seminal role as friend to Canadian writer George Woodcock.Flip that Orwell banner around and on the other side it reads:“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”