Description

Book Synopsis

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.



Trade Review
The white-hot reaction of a sensitive, observant, compassionate young man to poverty -- Dervla Murphy
Orwell was the great moral force of his age * Spectator *

Down and Out in Paris and London

    Product form

    A Paperback / softback by George Orwell

    £9.25

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      Book details

      Publisher Penguin Random House Group
      Imprint Penguin Classics
      Published 3 January 2013
      ISBN-13 9780141393032
      978-0141393032
      ISBN-10 0141393033
      Also in:
      Biography Memoirs Politics, Philosophy & Society Poverty and precarity Travel & Transport Classic travel writing Books by George Orwell

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      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.



      Trade Review
      The white-hot reaction of a sensitive, observant, compassionate young man to poverty -- Dervla Murphy
      Orwell was the great moral force of his age * Spectator *

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