George Orwell was one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. He’s lionized by many on the Right and criticized by many on the left, yet relatively little is known about his socialist writings and politics.

In Hope Lies in the Proles: George Orwell and the Left, socialist scholar John Newsinger gives an overview of Orwell’s work and political trajectory. Aware of the political difficulties posed by Orwell with left-wing audiences — such as his support for the Cold War — Newsinger faces his task with political courage, presenting the English writer warts and all.

For Newsinger, Orwell was, until his death, a democratic socialist profoundly identified with the working class, which he saw as the agent of socialist transformation. Even in his most pessimistic moments, he saw in the working class the only potential for humanity, as the class that had the most to gain from a reconstruction of society. And it was the ups and downs of the working-class struggle of his times that, according to Newsinger, explain his work and his politics.