Anna Funder on Mrs Orwell

Anna Funder is the author of the international bestsellers All That I Am and Stasiland which won the 2004 Samuel Johnson Prize.

Now, Anna joins us for a blazing, genre-bending masterpiece which slips into the pages of Anna's literary hero, George Orwell.

As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own...

When she uncovers his forgotten wife, it’s a revelation. Eileen O’Shaughnessy’s literary brilliance shaped Orwell’s work and her practical nous saved his life. But why - and how - was she written out of the story?

Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells’ marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WWII in London. As she rolls up the screen concealing Orwell’s private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer - and what it is to be a wife.

Compelling and utterly original, Wifedom speaks to the unsung work of women everywhere today, while offering a breathtakingly intimate view of one of the most important literary marriages of the 20th century. It is a book that speaks to our present moment as much as it illuminates the past; a gift from one of the most inventive writers of our time.

"Simply, a masterpiece. Here, Anna Funder not only re-makes the art of biography, she resurrects a woman in full. And this in a narrative that grips the reader and unfolds through some of the most consequential moments - historical and cultural - of the twentieth century." ~ Geraldine Brooks, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction