Gordon Comstock loathes dull middle-class respectability and worship of money. He gives up a
'good job' in advertising to work part-time in a bookshop giving him more time to write. But
he slides instead into a self-induced poverty that destroys his creativity and his spirit. Only
Rosemary ever-faithful Rosemary has the strength to challenge his commitment to his chosen
way of life. Through the character of Gordon Comstock Orwell reveals his own disaffection with
the society he once himself renounced. Enlivened with vivid autobiographical detail George
Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying is a tragically witty account of the struggle to escape
from a materialistic existence with an introduction by Peter Davison in Penguin Modern
Classics.
