There’s exhilaration in reading every brilliant word

Chloe Hooper

Wifedom

COMPELLING & UTTERLY ORIGINAL

Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her 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 WW II 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.

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.

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

A marvelous book . . . I just loved it all, and have a permanently marked-up, dog-eared copy on my shelf for the next generation.

Tom Hanks

One of the most startling explorations of life-writing (Eileen’s, Orwell’s and Funder’s) in recent times . . . Wifedom is a genre-bending tour-de-force that resurrects an invisible woman, and relitigates the saintly image of the man she called “Eric” . . . a moving, forensic act of biographical reconstruction.

Robert McCrum, The Independent

‘A virtuoso performance on the theme, adding personal memoir, some fictional reconstructions and a glittering sense of purpose.’

Sarah Bakewell, New York Times

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