New Delhi, April 9 -- George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair in 1903 in Motihari, British India, became one of the 20th century's defining essayists, critics, and political novelists. After education in England and service in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, he turned toward writing shaped by poverty, imperialism, class, and political violence. His career reached its fullest force through Animal Farm in 1945 and Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949, works that fixed his reputation as a fierce critic of totalitarianism and manipulation. Orwell later described his mature work as being written "against totalitarianism," which makes him one of the clearest literary voices on truth, power, and language.

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