In 2012 writer John Sutherland permanently lost his sense of smell. At about the same time, he embarked on a rereading of George Orwell and—still coping with his recent disability—noticed something peculiar: Orwell was positively obsessed with smell. In this original, irreverent biography, Sutherland offers a fresh account of Orwell’s life and works, one that sniffs out a unique, scented trail that wends from Burmese Days through Nineteen Eighty-Four and on to The Road to Wigan Pier.
Sutherland airs out the odors, fetors, stenches, and reeks trapped in the pages of Orwell’s books. From Winston Smith’s apartment in Nineteen Eighty-Four, which “smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats,” to the tantalizing aromas of concubine Ma Hla May’s hair in Burmese Days, with its “mingled scent of sandalwood, garlic, coconut oil, and jasmine,” Sutherland explores the scent narratives that abound in Orwell’s literary world. Along the way, he elucidates questions that have remained unanswered in previous biographies, addressing gaps that have kept the writer elusively from us.
In doing so, Sutherland offers an entertaining but enriching look at one of the most important writers of the twentieth century and, moreover, an entirely new and sensuous way to approach literature: nose first.
About the Author
John Sutherland is the author of some thirty books, including A Little History of Literature (2013) and How to be Well Read (2014). He is a reviewer and essayist for Winston Smith's newspaper, The Times.
Industry Reviews
'Sutherland is able, with the straightest of faces, to talk about Coming Up for Air being "the most aromatic of Orwell's novels" - a book that, his researches insist, "fairly caresses the nostrils". A conventional academic critic - which Sutherland is not - would probably throw up his or her hands in horror at this insouciance, but it takes only the briefest saunter through the Eng Lit canon to establish that the University of London's former Lord Northcliffe Professor is on to something, not merely in the matter of Orwell's nose but with literary life in general.' - DJ Taylor, The Times; 'This clever little book packs in a great deal: a prefatory essay on smell in literature, a breakneck biography of George Orwell and three quirky appendices including "smell narratives" of two of his books. Sutherland has an impressive nose for the pongs in Orwell's prose ... this biography is redolent, above all, of Sutherland's enduring enthusiasm for a writer he has been reading for more than half a century.' - Sunday Times Culture; 'Orwell's Nose is highly readable in a quick, casual style with many felicities ... this book sent me walking about nose aloft, like a Bisto Kid, hungry for (in Sutherland's phrase) "life's olfactions".' - Financial Times; 'Orwell's Nose is an olfactory cornucopia, a brilliant thematic biography and a compassionate exposure of an almost clean conscience in an invariably dirty age.' - Wall Street Journal; 'In this "pathological biography," a noted critic rereads Orwell and determines that the writer "was born with a singularly diagnostic sense of smell." In addition to the infamous assertion in The Road to Wigan Pier that "lower classes smell," Sutherland, who recently lost his own sense of smell, turns up other pungent landmarks of Orwell's life.' - The New Yorker; 'Do we need another biography of George Orwell? The answer is yes, if it is as racily readable as Orwell's Nose.' - David Lodge
