Overview

'You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them.' George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time among the desperately poor and destitute in London and Paris is a moving tour of the underworld of society. Here he painstakingly documents a world of unrelenting drudgery and squalor - sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses, working as a dishwasher in the vile 'H tel X', living alongside tramps, surviving on scraps and cigarette butts - in an unforgettable account of what being down and out is really like.

Full Product Details

9780141184388

Table of Contents

Reviews

This book falls into two distinct parts, both with an underlying common theme, the revealing of poverty at close range. Not an appealing subject, you will say. But have a look at the book and catch the strange fascination of the telling. First there is Paris, not the Paris of the boulevards or the Bois, nor yet of the Latin Quarter. But Paris of the slums, the Paris of those who live a precarious existence, always on the verge of actual starvation, a hand to mouth existence, from pawn shop to pawn shop. The youth who is telling of his own experiences, and of those around him, eventually lands a job as a dishwasher behind the scenes of a smart hotel restaurant. Vivid and lurid and unappetizing, are the pictures he gives of what goes on behind the scenes, human and otherwise. The second part of the book brings him to England, and the story recalls Josiah Flint's TRAMPING WITH TRAMPS, that expose of our own hobodom. Here is the English side of the picture today, exaggerated by the unemployment situation and the aftermath of war. It is particularly timely in showing the measures in active use for dealing with the many sorts and conditions of men who have hit the trail today, and who travel in hordes from one encampment to another. One wonders, in reading this book whether there is not here another Thomas Burke in the making. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), better known by his pen-name, George Orwell, was born in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. An author and journalist, Orwell was one of the most prominent and influential figures in twentieth-century literature. His unique political allegory Animal Farm was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with the dystopia of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which brought him world-wide fame. His novels and non-fiction include Burmese Days, Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available