Down and Out in Paris and London
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time living among the desperately poor and destitute, Down and Out in Paris and London is a moving tour of the underworld of society
'You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them.'
Written when Orwell was a struggling writer in his twenties, it documents his 'first contact with poverty'. Here, he painstakingly documents a world of unrelenting drudgery and squalor - sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses of last resort, working as a dishwasher in Paris's vile 'Hôtel X', surviving on scraps and cigarette butts, living alongside tramps, a star-gazing pavement artist and a starving Russian ex-army captain. Exposing a shocking, previously-hidden world to his readers, Orwell gave a human face to the statistics of poverty for the first time - and in doing so, found his voice as a writer.
Customer Reviews
Try it
Rough and tumble prose - it was Orwell's first novel - nevertheless a fascinating account of life in a bygone age. His memoirs of Paris fractionally more memorable than those of London. Full of wonderful details of street life in both cities around 1930.
Good read
Gives one a real sense of insight into poverty.