Interview with Orwell Scholar John Rodden

John Rodden has published ten books about Orwell and his legacy, including The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and Claiming of “St. George” Orwell (1989), Scenes from an Afterlife: The Legacy of George Orwell (2003), Every Intellectual’s Big Brother: George Orwell’s Literary Siblings (2007), The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell (2007), The Unexamined Orwell (2011), and with John Rossi, The Cambridge Introduction to George Orwell (2012). His work on Orwell also partly inspired him to take a deep interest in the history of Socialism, including the rise and fall of totalitarianism in Germany. He has written a quartet of books focused on cultural politics in Germany before and after reunification: Repainting the Little Red Schoolhouse: A History of East German Education, 1945-1995 and Textbook Reds: Schoolbooks, Ideology, and Eastern German Identity (2006), The Walls That Remain: Western and Eastern Germans Since Reunification (2008), and Dialectics, Dogmas, and Dissent: Stories from East German Victims of Human Rights Abuse (2010). He has, moreover, published books and numerous journal articles on the modern British novel, public intellectuals in the USA and Britain, and contemporary Latin American literature.