George Orwell (1903–1950) was made famous by his dystopian novel 1984, but he also wrote more traditional psychological fiction. The hero of his novel Out of Breath (1939) is George Bowling, an insurance salesman of forty-five years old, a perfectly ordinary man. But World War I split his life into two parts—before and after. His provincial childhood, with its small joys like fishing, was left far behind. “What would I have become if the war hadn’t broken out? I don’t know, but not what happened. If a man miraculously survived that slaughter, his thoughts were bound to begin to ferment.” And so, at yet another turning point in time, in anticipation of a new war, George Bowling felt an irresistible urge to visit his treasured pond, which, as he remembered, was full of incredibly large fish…