The Same Man

Praise

“Nimble and provocative.”—Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
“The peace that Orwell and Waugh found with each other suggests a common ground for liberals and conservatives of today.”—Los Angeles Times
“Lebedoff has pulled off a literary hat trick. It isn’t possible to find two 20th-century literary peers who, at first glance, seem more different in ambition, temperament and subject matter than the authors of, respectively, 1984 and Brideshead Revisited (both of which have been filmed twice, including a version of Brideshead currently in theaters). The connections, though, have been there all along, slipping past previous literary scholars who couldn’t see beyond appearance.”—Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
“The Same Man places the work of these two literary giants cheek by jowl. Comparisons are riveting, but the conclusion is dire. For as we read Orwell and Waugh’s prophetic warnings we cannot help a shiver of recognition. We have created a world they would have abhorred.”— The Times (London)
“Just the kind of book that both Waugh and Orwell, full of passion and conviction themselves, might have enjoyed—or enjoyed arguing with.”—Wall Street Journal
“The two met only once, in late August of 1949. Waugh, who had written Orwell an admiring note, visited him as Orwell lay dying. It was an act of disinterested kindness on the part of a man known more for his rudeness than for his charity. No record remains of their conversation that day. But certainly, as Lebedoff shows, they were secret sharers, and they recognized it at the last. Seen through the honest window pane of good prose, their worlds were neither high nor low but one and the same. The deepest caves are linked by secret passageways to the peaks.”—New York Sun
“A pithy, thoughtful study of two brilliant authors who, were they alive today, might very well have ended up supping together at a faded gentlemen’s club lamenting the idiocies of the modern age and what Orwell aptly termed its "smelly little orthodoxies."—Toronto Star
“For those wearied by doorstop biographies, this lean and urbane dual portrait is a breath of fresh air. . . . Lebedoff nimbly compares and contrasts the lives and art of these literary titans.”—Publishers Weekly
“This thrillingly written study of two of the 20th century’s great social icons will impel readers to return to their timeless works.”—Library Journal
"Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell exemplified the brilliance of British writing in the 20th century, but we usually think of them as very different men. David Lebedoff shows how they were, in fact, quite alike in their discomfort with the modern age. This is especially reassuring to those of us who admire both of these writers."––Walter Issacson, author of Einstein: His Life and Universe
"An insightful, witty, immensely readable account of two giants of English literature whose work, in very different ways, prefigured the moral and political dilemmas bedeviling our society today.”––Lynne Olson, author of Troublesome Young Men