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50
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
64/100Critics
36/100Scholars
Author:
Anna Funder
Publisher:
Knopf
Date:
August 22, 2023
The story of the marriage behind some of the most famous literary works of the 20th centuryâand a probing consideration of what it means to be a wife and a writer in the modern world.
What The Reviewers Say
Funder does a virtuoso performance on the theme, adding personal memoir, some fictional reconstructions and a glittering sense of purpose.
Funder takes this fascinating material and creates a peculiar hybrid. Wifedom is part biography and part speculative fiction written in the present tense.
Almost impossible to characterize Anna Funder's book about Eileen Orwell, known — if she's thought of at all — as 'wife of George Orwell.' But this dazzling, infuriating book argues that she deserves a bigger place in history.
With the precision of a historian, Funder cobbles together scant details to reconstruct a life. And with the imaginative force of a novelist, she speculates in clearly sign-posted moments on what that life was like.
