Down and Out in Paris and London
Author | : George Orwell |
Publisher | : Birlinn Ltd |
Total Pages | : 216 |
Release | : 2024-01-04 |
ISBN-10 | : 9781788856416 |
ISBN-13 | : 1788856414 |
Rating | : 4/5 (16 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: 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. 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.