Burmese Days, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Coming Up for Air

Jan 3, 2026 7:10 AM

Author:George Orwell

George Orwell was a novelist unlike any other, fiercely devoted to presenting the truth as he saw it. The three novels in this collection date from the 1930s, before his political satires Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four made him world-famous. Compelling works in their own right, they are all studies of men at odds with their surroundings. In Burmese Days, the darkest of the three, a frustrated expatriate finds himself trapped between the decadence of his own people and the corruption of the natives they claim to rule. Coming Up for Airdramatizes the frustration of every little man in his hopeless struggle against bourgeois respectability. Keep the Aspidistra Flying is a sort of comedy in which minor poet Gordon Comstock engages briefly with romantic dreams before realizing that salvation is to be found, not in escape from his life but engagement with it.

Reviews

An immensely readable, passionately written epic, with an involving, fast-moving plot constantly challenging readers' assumptions

—— Guardian

Young readers will find themselves swept along with Breslin's engaging cast into a world where duty and compassion must somehow co-exist

—— TES

Breslin brilliantly weaves the themes of emancipation, class, love, propaganda and the machinations of war into the story of how these young lives are changed with a light touch that belies the seriousness of the subject

—— Financial Times

Breslin's light touch and beautiful prose give the harrowing sights and sounds of the war a much more human feel . . . A novel that will stay with me for a long time

—— The Bookseller

Theresa Breslin is simply a superb writer and I strongly recommend this novel to all readers

—— Teen Titles

An African whodunit that alludes to the troublesome relationship that lies between the modernity and custom ... Parkes has managed to write fabulously poetic and fresh prose that is both vernacular and contemporary

—— Hisham Matar

In this tale of crime, punishment, and forgiveness Parkes' landscapes are filled with magic, his characters speak with the wisdom of the ancients; he has used his poet's sensibility to recreate for us the oral tales, fables and wonders of a world before time, a world overtaken by time

—— Helon Habila

The novel has a compelling draw; the supernatural is undercut by a psychological authenticity with strong Freudian resonance and a very human pull...like all good detective stories of the gentler persuasion, it is a humane investigation of human failing as much as it is about crime, but it also touches on more threatening and mysterious territory

—— Times Literary Supplement

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