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Orwell Celebrated

The New York Times reports that the town of George Orwell's birth plans to recognize the British author. The town is Motihari, in the Indian state of Bihar (Orwell's father was an Indian Civil Servant).

“The house has been in a bad condition for years,” Vivek Singh, Bihar’s art and culture secretary, said. “The government has decided to initiate work to protect it. We will not allow George Orwell’s ancestral house, where he was born, to be lost to history. The government priority is to protect it, followed by renovation.”

Some of Orwell's best pieces are about India and about colonialism more generally. His famous essay Shooting An Elephant can be found here. And here is his fascinating, controversial analysis of Gandhi.