Outspoken is delighted to welcome highly-acclaimed author of Stasiland and All That I Am, Anna Funder back to Maleny this month for a conversation on her new book, Wifedom.
In Wifedom, Anna’s attention is focused on the Orwells, and on Mrs Orwell in particular.
“I have always loved George Orwell, his self-deprecating humour, his laser vision about how power works, and who it works on,“ she said
It was to Orwell she would turn when her own life began to overwhelm. But then she read about his wife, and her curiosity was piqued.
Eileen O’Shaughnessy was also a writer, and her literary brilliance not only shaped Orwell’s work, but her practical common sense saved his life. Why and how, Funder wondered, had she come to be do completely written out of their story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder re-creates the Orwells’ marriage, a period that includes both the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. Somehow the fact that Eileen was in Spain with Orwell never gets mentioned. Nor that she worked at several Ministries in London during the war to support them both.
Anna pulls back the curtain on Orwell’s often promiscuous private life, asking what it takes to be a writer—and what it is to be wife.
Wifedom (sometimes the word reads like a sentence) speaks to our present moment as much as it illuminates the past. Part biography, part story, part polemic, the book defies genre. It is utterly original, both a fascinating story played out against significant events of the Twentieth Century, and an ode to the unsung work of women everywhere.
Our introducing author will be Angela O’Keeffe, speaking about her new novel, The Sitter.
See Anna Funder in Conversation at Maleny Community Centre on Wednesday 26 July at 6.30pm.
Tickets $25 and $18 students.
Visit outspokenmaleny.com
