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Book Synopsis
George Bowling, a forty-five-year-old insurance salesman with a wife and two children, is overweight, depressed and haunted by ever-present portents of imminent global conflict. Dreaming of escaping the staid suburban rut in which he has become embedded, he reminisces about his home town in Oxfordshire, Lower Binfield. But as he seeks refuge in the rural idyll of his treasured childhood memories, the rapacious forces of “progress” continue their relentless march, eventually forcing George to reflect on the folly of nostalgia and the impossibility of reliving the past. By turns comic and melancholy, Orwell’s fourth novel – published in 1939 to critical and commercial acclaim by Victor Gollancz – is Wellsian in its exploration of the frustrations and helplessness of a lower-middle-class protagonist faced with the indifference of a rapidly changing world, and a vital record of a society on the verge of war.

Coming Up for Air: Annotated Edition

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    A Paperback / softback by George Orwell

    3 in stock

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      Publisher: Alma Books Ltd
      Publication Date: Publication Date: 22/06/2023
      ISBN13: 9781847499004, 978-1847499004
      ISBN10: 1847499007

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      George Bowling, a forty-five-year-old insurance salesman with a wife and two children, is overweight, depressed and haunted by ever-present portents of imminent global conflict. Dreaming of escaping the staid suburban rut in which he has become embedded, he reminisces about his home town in Oxfordshire, Lower Binfield. But as he seeks refuge in the rural idyll of his treasured childhood memories, the rapacious forces of “progress” continue their relentless march, eventually forcing George to reflect on the folly of nostalgia and the impossibility of reliving the past. By turns comic and melancholy, Orwell’s fourth novel – published in 1939 to critical and commercial acclaim by Victor Gollancz – is Wellsian in its exploration of the frustrations and helplessness of a lower-middle-class protagonist faced with the indifference of a rapidly changing world, and a vital record of a society on the verge of war.

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