Great book

I just finished George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. What a great book--I highly recommend it. The writing is excellent, detailed, high quality, and readable though I didn't make my way quickly through it. I think it's because he has such detail about his life as a tramp that I had to take the time to savor it.

Well, it got me interested in his life, so I looked for a biography. I settled on Inside George Orwell because it's the most psychological one I found. Other bios are either literary, which really wouldn't give me much insight into how he thought and lived, or just too academic. I want to know about the man who wrote the books I've read so far: Burmese Days, Down and Out in Paris and London, Animal Farm, and 1984.

Actually, when I was in Romania in the mid-90's traveling around, I met a Romanian who read 1984 when it was banned back during communism--someone from a British governmental entity "smuggled" it in. She said that 1984 described Romania at the time. Which would help explain why they'd want to ban it--in addition to the government's contempt of freedom, culture, and thinking.