What can one say about a book like "Orlando"? It is a masterpiece, no less, a through and through satirical work, to the point where the sarcasm becomes an exhausting overkill. Modern feminists would find it justifiable to warrant this level of ridicule to reflect the severity of historical sexual double standards. It is as much Virginia Woolf's private love letter to her real-life lesbian lover Vita Sackville-West as a public work of fiction - Orlando is the idealised version of VSW. This mock biography chronicles the life of an extraordinary human being who lives for 300 years to mingle with different English aristocrats and literary figures and who, without explanation and elaboration in a Kafka-esque manner in the middle of the novel, transforms into a woman and lives on under different social expectations. Orlando lives through the ups and downs of an aristocratic household. It is satirical on (at least) three levels: 1) it appropriates the literary styles of the times to accentuate the pretentiousness of such figures; 2) through the eyes of a transgender individual, it portrays sexual inequalities throughout the ages and; 3) taking inspirations from the history of downfall of the Sackville-West family, criticising British aristocratic life and practices. As a non-British non-literary polemicist, the majority of the content hardly concerns me, let alone the private matters of the people involved, and the abundance of in-jokes make it a very difficult read even with the help of the explanatory notes. That is not to say "Orlando" is not worth reading. Quite the contrary, I am very glad to have gone through this fascinating exploration of "new" writing form and also to have a detailed look at one feminist's powerful arguments against centuries of frustrating injustice. If anything, one also gets to read about old London. It is unlikely to be a title one would "like" in the conventional sense, but there is much to admire and appreciate intellectually.
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