Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

Orwell's account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. He details the particular absurdities of that particularly absurd war and explains the infighting between the various bickering political factions on the Republic's side (Russian-backed Communists, Trotskists, trade union militias, anarchists, Socialists, et al.) from a grunt's point of view. His direct, plain-speaking style cuts through the jumble of political rhetoric to reveal his personal disappointment in the failure of liberal Spain to unify and defeat the Fascists, not to mention the indifference abroad (he blames the international for failing to deliver the reality of the situation). One can see his concerns developing from his real-life experience -- the lack of humanity involved in the political parties/theories that govern people's lives and the role of the media in twisting perception play a role in both Animal Farm and 1984.

The homage is to a brief vision of an truly alternate system, a worker's society that functioned in Barcelona before Stalin's influence corrupted the effort. While Orwell is mystified by the foreign-ness and exoticism of Spain (alternately frustrated and enraptured), he never romanticizes it. His basic love is for the integrity of the human individual, lost amid economic and political systems.