Despite hailing from a comfortable family background budding poet Gordon Comstock decides to
declare war on money and all the middle-class trappings that wealth can buy. Working in a small
bookshop and living in a bedsit in London he dreams of completing an ambitious poem in rhyme
royal and devoting his life to literature. But when poverty begins to damage his self-esteem
and taint his worldview and his romantic and professional lives start falling apart will
Gordon be able to uphold his anti-money principles or will he succumb to the lure of lucre and
everything he stands against? First published in 1936 Keep the Aspidistra Flying is the
author's third novel and one of his most outspoken works of social criticism. Partly
autobiographical it sits alongside Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four as a reminder of
Orwell's lucid narrative style and his abilities as a politically and socially engaged writer.
